The Shankill Road (from Irish: Seanchill meaning "old church") is the arterial road leading through west Belfast, Northern Ireland. It runs through the predominantly loyalist working-class area known as the Shankill. The road stretches westwards for approximately 2.4 km (1.5 mi) from central Belfast and is lined, to an extent, by shops. The residents live in the many streets which branch off the main road. Much of the area along the Shankill Road forms the five wards of Court district electoral area.

The first Shankill residents lived at the bottom of what is now known as Glencairn: a small settlement of ancient people inhabited a ring fort, built where the Ballygomartin and Forth rivers meet.

A settlement around the point at which the Shankill Road becomes the Woodvale Road, at the junction with Cambrai Street, was known as Shankill from the Irish Seanchill meaning 'old church'. Believed to date back to 455 AD, it was known as the "Church of St Patrick of the White Ford" and in time had six smaller churches, known as "alterages", attached to it across the west bank of the River Lagan. As a paved road the Shankill dates back to around the sixteenth century as at the time it was part of the main road to Antrim, a role now filled by the A6. The lower sections of the Shankill Road were in former times the edge of Belfast with both Boundary Street on the lower Shankill and Townsend Street in the middle Shankill taking their names from the fact that at the time they were built they marked the approximate end of Belfast.

Frankie Curry (c.1955 – 17 March 1999) nicknamed "Pigface", was an Ulster loyalist who was involved with a number of paramilitary groups during his long career. A critic of the Northern Ireland peace process, Curry was killed during a loyalist feud.

A native of Belfast's Shankill Road and a nephew of Gusty Spence, Curry became involved in the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) at an early age, claiming that he had helped conceal guns in the aftermath of the June 1966 murder of Catholic Peter Ward by Spence, Robert Williamson and Hugh McClean in the Malvern Arms bar on the Shankill.

Curry's reputation within the UVF soon grew and in 1972 at the age of 17, he was a central figure in the plot to break his uncle Gusty Spence out of the Maze Prison. Curry was driving Spence back to prison after a period of leave when their car was stopped by a UVF patrol and Spence was abducted. In fact both Curry and Spence were closely involved in planning and executing the supposed kidnapping. Curry knew in advance the Springmartin Road location on which the event was to take place and had been told specially by the UVF leadership to drive Spence that day.