It seems hard to believe now but Catholics and Protestants once lived side by side in harmony in West Belfast.  Springfield Park was the area's last religiously mixed development.  It was swept away by one of the worst gun battles of the Troubles on August 9^th, 1971, following the introduction of Internment.
Producers Frank Martin and Seamus Kelters, who as children both lived in the street, tracked down and interviewed more than twenty of their former neighbours.  " Finding them, after more than a quarter of a century, was very difficult," according to Martin.  "Many of the people had emigrated and were impossible to contact.  Others had died.  But we were delighted to find that when we did trace people they had fond memories of the street.''

The documentary outlines the attraction of the street, with its semi-detached houses and gardens, to young working class couples in the mid-1960s.  It then charts their experiences with the onset of the Troubles and tells how the residents of Springfield Park, both Catholic and Protestant, attempted to keep their world secure - forming joint vigilante patrols and sitting alongside each other on their tenants association.

In the aftermath of the introduction of Internment, a night during which six people were killed in the area and many of the homes were wrecked, most of those living at the top end of the street simply picked up what was left of their belongings and fled.  Part of Springfield Park became a ghost town, for many years caught in a no-man's land along the sectarian divide.
"It wasn't easy for people to speak on camera about their experiences," says Frank Martin.  "Three of the people we spoke to, for example, were shot and wounded that night as they tried to evacuate the street.  Thankfully there were plenty of good memories as well and residents still hold a real nostalgia for the good times they had in the street.  We wanted to tell the story because it was the only community we really felt a part of. Even now the heavy military and frontier feel to the whole place is a reminder always of what happened.
"It's really a story of ordinary people who saw their hopes realised, then dashed within the space of less than a decade.  It's a snapshot of one street prior to the Troubles and how the violence changed everything for whole families."