Ormeau Road is a road in south Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland. Ormeau Park is adjacent to it. It forms part of the A24.
History
The road, as currently laid out, dates from the first decades of the 19th century when a bridge was built connecting Newtownbreda village to Belfast. This route was known more commonly as the New Ballynafeigh Road before eventually taking on the name of Ormeau House, the Marquess of Donegall's residence.
Ravenhill Road was the Old Ballynafeigh Road. Ballynafeigh is the name of the townland through which most of the Ormeau Road runs. It is an anglicisation of the Irish meaning 'townland of the lawn or green'.
Areas of the Ormeau Road
Start of the road
The area at the start of the Ormeau Road is not known by a single name but contains a number of features. Close to the Markets area is the site of the former Belfast Gasworks, originally built in the 19th century and remaining open for its original purpose until 1988. The area has been substantially redeveloped under the Laganside Corporation and now includes a number of office buildings for companies such as Halifax The Gasworks is also home to the Radisson Blu Hotel Belfast.
Donegall Pass faces the Gasworks and, for a short period in the 1970s and 1980s, represented a violent interface with the Markets area. Donegall Pass has a rich social history and has a plethora of Chinese shops and restaurants, Indian wholesalers, local cafe and sandwich bars, a pharmacy, churches, antique dealers and a newly opened auction house.
Other features include the former headquarters of UTV plc, Havelock House, which was home to UTV from the station went on air in October 1959 until late 2017. The headquarters of Belfast CityBeat are situated very close to Havelock House, just over the Havelock Bridge (which crosses the main Belfast to Dublin railway line which runs under the Ormeau Road).
The Ormeau Road between Donegall Pass and the Ormeau Bridge includes the Belfast South constituency offices of both Sinn Féin and the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP).
This part of the Ormeau Road suffered a number of attacks during the Troubles when both Protestant and Catholic residents were killed.
In the mid-1990s the Ormeau Road became associated with political controversy as a result of parades by bands from Ballynafeigh Orange Lodge. Claims were also made that members of the Lodge had demonstrated triumphalism over the murder of five men in Sean Graham's bookmakers by the Ulster Defence Association.
In 1996, the dispute spilled over into conflict between the Lower Ormeau Residents' Action Group and the Royal Ulster Constabulary after widespread rioting led the police to effectively seal off the area for two days. The Parades Commission initially supported the marchers in the dispute although since 1999 parades have been banned from the area, even leading to the Orange Order briefly using the Ormeau Park as its meeting place instead of Edenderry.
Until 1999, the North of Ireland Cricket and Football Club's home stadium, the Ormeau Cricket Ground – one of the earliest international rugby venues in Ireland – was in the area, although, following a series of perceived sectarian arson attacks, the club's merger into the Belfast Harlequins has seen the demolition of the stadium, which has been redeveloped as housing, known as Lavinia Square and Mews.
The Holyland, an area mainly inhabited by university students faces this area on the western side of the road.
The "Lower Ormeau Road" is the part of the road north of the bridge.
South of the bridge
A number of local buildings and services, such the Community Development Association, the Post Office and the Orange Hall, use the name Ballynafeigh, although the wider (and older) townland of Ballynafeigh also includes much of the lower Ormeau and Holyland.
The Ormeau Bridge is a significant part of the architecture and history of the wider area. Work began on the bridge in 1809 and was opened within a year or so. This bridge was demolished as unusable however and was not fully rebuilt until 1863. The Lagan forms the boundary between County Antrim, encompassing the inner-city districts, and County Down, lying to the south-east.