Sailortown (real): An historic area of Belfast on the River Lagan that was a thriving area between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. Many large businesses developed in the area, ships docked for loading and unloading and their crews from far flung places such as China and Russia mixed with a local Belfast population of ship’s captains, chandlers, seamen and their families.
Sailortown was a lively area where churches and bars fought for the souls and attendance of the residents and where many languages were spoken each day. The basement of the Rotterdam Bar, at the bottom of Clarendon Dock, acted as the overnight lock-up to prisoners being deported to the Antipodes on boats the next morning, and the stocks which held the prisoners could still be seen until the nineteen-nineties.
During the years of World War Two the area was the most bombed area of the UK outside Central London, as the Germans tried to destroy Belfast’s ship building capacity. Sadly, the area fell into disrepair in the nineteen-seventies and eighties when the motorway extension led to compulsory purchases of many homes and businesses and decimated the Sailortown community. The rebuilding of the community has now begun, with new families moving into starter homes and professionals into expensive dockside flats.
The Pathology Labs (fictitious): The labs, set on Belfast’s Saintfield Road as part of a large science park, are where Doctor John Winter, Northern Ireland’s Head of Pathology, and his co-worker, Doctor Des Marsham, Head of Forensic Science, carry out the post-mortem and forensic examinations that help Craig’s team solve their cases.
St Mary’s Healthcare Trust (fictitious): St Mary’s is one of the largest hospital trusts in the UK. It is spread over several hospital sites across Belfast, including the main Royal St Mary’s Hospital site off the motorway and the Maternity, Paediatric and Endocrine (M.P.E.) unit, a stand-alone site on Belfast’s Lisburn Road, in the University Quarter of the city.
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