Piazza-style shopping in Rathcoole

Piazza-style shopping in Rathcoole

Talk in recent Kerr’s Corner columns about the Angel of Rathcoole statue at the Diamond prompted me to look up contemporary newspaper reports.  I can remember a lot of controversy at the time, but there seems to have been nothing in the local papers.  There was, though, extensive coverage of the new Diamond shopping centre.  The extension to the Diamond opened near the end of 1966 and brought public lavatories to the estate.

 
The new part of the Diamond brought a supermarket, the Minimac; J S Kyle – ‘an ultra-modern chemist’s shop’ and most prominently, The Cosy Homes, then ‘Newtownabbey’s leading house furnishers’.  The Cosy Homes Rathcoole Superstore occupied the site later taken over by the VG supermarket.  It was on two floors and carried a wide range of household furniture, curtains, lighting fixtures and everything a house needs to turn it into a home.  At the time a lounge suite cost 59 Guineas.  Remember when large purchases were priced in guineas?  At the time, of course, my favourite shop was The Squirrel, which was the best sweetie shop for miles around. In those days half a crown went a long way!

 
People who have actually lived in Rathcoole over the past forty or so years ago will be surprised to read that the Diamond brought Continental ‘piazza-style shopping’ to the estate.  If that was the idea, it came too early for Rathcoole.  According to the East Antrim Times in 1966,  ‘The shopping centre presents the best possible argument for shopping at home away from the hustle and endless queues of Belfast.’  In practice, it degenerated into a boarded-up and vandalised windswept wilderness.  Apart from the temporary loss of the Angel, few will mourn its passing.