Royal Avenue

The upper part was formerly named John Street, and the lower part was named Hercules Street after Sir Hercules Langford. Since that time, it has served as Belfast's principal shopping thoroughfare, and today it is lined with many leading department stores and top name shops. The city's most prestigious and elegant hotel, the Grand Central Hotel, was on the street before it was demolished in the late 1980s to make room for the £40 million shopping complex, Westfield CastleCourt. A year after the hotel closed down in 1971, it was converted into a fortified military barracks serving as battalion headquarters for regiments in the British Army that were based in Belfast city centre. The former…

.]] Throughout the Troubles, Royal Avenue was targeted by the Provisional IRA due to its economic importance as a commercial zone and the presence of the British Army military barracks. The barracks itself was bombed many times in the mid-1970s, despite the anti-rocket metal mesh put up to fortify the edifice. Crossin, who lived in the Suffolk district of south-west Belfast, had been walking home after spending the evening in the Holy Cross Bowling Club in the Ardoyne area of North Belfast from where his family originated. On 24 February 1988 two Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) soldiers, James Cummings and Fred Starrett, were killed when a 200-pound remote-controlled IRA bomb, hidden behind…