Farmer’s boy Samuel David Bell, having come to Belfast from Stewartstown Co Tyrone to work for a small grocery business, Dunwoody & Blakeley, was fortunate enough to be able to purchase that business from its ageing owners, and founded the firm of S.D. Bell & Co in 1887, on the corner site of Church Lane and Ann Street, Belfast.
By 1900, a further suburban Belfast site, Wandsworth Villa, had been developed at the Knock junction. Samuel lived above the shop with his family until 1926, when he sold the house to the Northern Bank, and built the premises we currently occupy, in the field where he had until then kept his dray horses!