Belfast Council officials are advising elected members to name a playground in the Village area after the 1950’s pop legend Ruby Murray, following a groundswell of local support.
Officials have written a report for the council ’s People and Communities Committee, advising councillors to begin the process of renaming a small park at the junction of Nubia Street and Moltke Street, “Ruby Murray Park,” in line with a community request. The committee was supposed to meet this week but was postponed for Queen Elizabeth II’s period of mourning.
Ruby Florence Murray (1935 to 1996) was born in Moltke Street, off the Donegall Road, and became one of the most popular singers in Britain and Ireland in the 1950’s, scoring ten UK chart single hits between 1954 and 1959. She made pop chart history in March 1955 by having five hits in the Top Twenty in a single week.
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She was an actress, performing on film with Frankie Howard, and had her own television show in the 50’s. Her popularity led to her name being adopted in Cockney rhyming slang as a rhyme for “curry” - the phrase “have a ruby” appears in various episodes of the TV comedy series Only Fools and Horses.
A Radius housing association development in 2014 created the open space at the junction of Nubia Street and Moltke Street. Calls from the local community to use the new space as a village green and play park came to fruition in 2019 when the council approved the land transfer from Radius housing association to council ownership.
The council report states: “At the beginning of the development the community, through Blackstaff Community Development Association, requested the asset be named after the late Ruby Murray who was a local resident. The complexities of completing the land transfer were such that the naming was not treated as a priority at the time and for the council the asset is referred to as Nubia St. playground.
“There have been a number of requests from the community over the intervening years, and most recently contact has been made by Mr Burgess, the husband of the late Ruby Murray in support of the initiative. The Chair of the local Neighbourhood Partnership has also been consulted and has indicated that he has no issues with the name being proposed."
It adds: "Whilst there is no current policy on the naming of parks, (there is a) framework (which) forms the basis of current practice, with the public consultation element carried out through the council’s “Your Say” platform.
"Officers are proposing that as there is only one name coming forward for consideration, and given the strong support within the local community, the committee might consider that the normal process of wide scale public consultation is not followed on this occasion, and that members agree to the renaming of the asset as Ruby Murray Park."
There are a number of tributes to Ruby Murray across the city, including a Blue Plaque dedicated to her at the Ulster Hall. Her image is painted alongside a host of famous Ulster faces in the passageway mural facing the Duke of York Bar, Commercial Court.
A new date for the postponed council People and Communities Committee has yet to be made public.
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