ARSON IN NORTH STREET

THE SUSPICIOUS devastating fire in North Street Arcade on April 18th 2004 was a tragic loss for the people of Belfast.  Yes, it is true that Lower North Street has gotten a bit down at heel over the last twenty years or so, but it still has a bit of character about it.

North Street Arcade was an oasis of local treasures in a city centre that is growing increasingly bland, with all the same chainstores as any other town in Great Britain.  It’s getting that there’s no point in going anywhere else, as one town centre is virtually interchangeable with another.

 
North Street Arcade first opened in 1936 when that part of the city was the heart of commercial life.  Unlike many soulless modern shopping malls it allowed in natural light, set off by a huge dome at the bend in middle.  It was a Grade II listed building.

 There were only twenty shops in the arcade, which links Lower North Street with Lower Donegall Street, but what a mix it offered.  Kozo sold all kinds of specialist hand made paper.  Rip-off Clothing catered to the fashion tastes of Ulster’s punks and other youth cults.  Cathedral Records, managed for the last couple of years by the renowned punk impresario of the seventies, TerrI Hooley, complemented this shop with a wide mix of music, much of it on vinyl LPs.  This irreplaceable musical treasure has been totally lost.

 
Also gone is a petshop, a couple of ‘new age’ shops, a craftwork shop, an especially well-stocked second-hand bookshop, the arty Arcadia Café, an art gallery, a video shop, the offices of the Belfast Film Festival and the Cathedral Quarter Festival, the offices of Vacuum magazine and McKernan’s shoemakers – a family firm which has traded in the Donegall Street area since 1910.

 
Rita Harkin of the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society has called for the building to be restored or replicated, but the omens are not good.  The North Street Arcade fire came nearly thirty years to the day after incendiary bombs wiped out another Belfast landmark, Smithfield Market.

 
Old Smithfield Market started in the 1780s as a castle market.  By 1819 it was flourishing.  Wheat, barley and oats were sold on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and hides on Tuesdays, Thursdays and also on Fridays.  Peter Mullan opened the first bookstall in 1850.  The livestock gradually went elsewhere and the market was covered over in the late Nineteenth Century.

 
The Belfast journalist Bud Bossence wrote of Smithfield in 1964, “It is one of the few pieces of old world charm we have, both to give ourselves moments of relief to the growing ugliness of the city centre and to offer tourists something that does not fit into the monotonous pattern of conformity now spreading over these islands.”

 
Some greedy property developers had their eye on Smithfield for many years.  In 1953 one Belfast councillor claimed that, “Smithfield Market is a museum piece.  It has served its purpose and is no longer a decoration to the city”.  Cllr Haig wanted the market site for a multi-story car park!  Happily, the good councillor was overruled and the market went on for another twenty years until May 7^th 1974 when the historic market caught fire at 3:00am. 

 
Eight fire engines and over a dozen jets could not save it from the fire bombs.  People stood in tears in the square as they watched the smouldering ruins.  As with today’s Arcade traders, the Smithfield traders called for the market to be rebuilt.  “I buy anything’ legend Joe Kavanagh told newspapers that, “People have been demanding we get together and rebuild the market.  I hope the people of the market will do this.  It will never be the same again but we must do our best to preserve as much of the character of the place as we can.”
 

Sadly, this did not happen.  The site was demolished and replaced by a gated compound of ugly prefabricated buildings.  The atmosphere of the old place never returned.  By 1990, the site was swallowed up by the huge CastleCourt shopping mall – including its car park - and another Smithfield Market was built on the site of an old bus station.

 
This new Smithfield Market has struggled to find itself, but it is now beginning to do well.  Ironically, it too is under threat from plans to build a vast extension to CastleCourt that would have also swallowed up a great swathe of inner North Belfast running from Millfield to Rosemary Street and Donegall Street to Royal Avenue.  Ironically, this would also have swept away the North Street Arcade!  Planners turned down this development in favour of the Victoria Square scheme.  It will be interesting to see what happens now!  I suspect that Bud Bossence will be turning in his grave.