I was in Magherafelt today (well, a week last Saturday), for the first time in quite a while.
What struck me was how unlike other Northern Irish towns it is in terms of being relatively free from vacant stores and from the other usual symptoms of commercial ill-health such as lots of cash only businesses (barbers, nail salons, kebab shops) and bookies, charity shops and vape shops.
It certainly has these but they are not obvious in their representation, indeed in contrast there’s lots of cafes and I mean quite top shelf affairs, not just Bob & Bert’s (which I visited – I have small children, B&B are more tolerant of crumb flinging toddlers than coffee guru type places) and numerous clothes shops, including a fantastic tailors on the Diamond and other small businesses taking up commercial space.
What with all the yoga pants-clad ladies walking around with expensive takeaway coffees, I had thought myself to be in a wealthy urban suburb of some city, not a town whose two chief annual events were once a May market that was besieged by fart-gas-armed teenagers and Dunamoney Flute Band’s annual band parade.
Even the alleyway to the bus station is lined with nice businesses.
Aside from the sad sight of the former cattle market and a site on Church Street (see link below) the town is quite free of derelict buildings unlike e.g. Newtownards or Downpatrick or Ballymoney.
So, I’ve been pondering all day (well, week now) as to why Magherafelt has not succumbed to the commercial canker that many (if not most) of NI’s larger towns have fallen to, especially as people often refer to Amazon as the major death blow to the high street, but Magherafelt is no less immune to Bezos Inc. than any other town.
It doesn’t have much of the supposed drivers of prosperity e.g. Industry and diversity, unlike neighbouring Cookstown or Dungannon, both of which are struggling to house their various engineering and manufacturing companies and are very diverse in terms of population.
Regarding industry, well, the sawmills are gone, the cattle market is closed, there’s maybe one clothes factory left but it’s very small and bespoke and it has no more industrial estates than any other place.
There’s cement plants by the Lough, but if they were fortune bringers then Antrim, Cookstown and Dungannon would also share the bounty too.
I will go through the suggestions as given by people who were forced to ponder this at my leisure.
Location Location Location – It is situated 40min from Belfast (depending on traffic) making it a good dorm town.
Yes, this IS true in its own right.
However, the 1hr commuter radius also includes Bangor, Newtownards, Larne, Carrickfergus, Dungannon, Ballymena, Antrim, Armagh, Lisburn, Downpatrick, Craigavon, Banbridge, Newry and numerous other larger towns (maybe Coleraine at a pinch) and they have varying degrees of High Street blight.
So, it can’t just be the commuter belt aspect.
And it’s definitely not a tourist area, that’s for sure – It has the Sperrins nearby and the Loughs Neagh and Beg, but none of these are hot tickets and again if they were then other neighbouring towns would be seeing similar rewards.
The Good Schools – Yes, St Mary’s and the Rainey Endowed have enviable reputations – but there are good schools in other commuter belt towns too – Armagh, Lisburn, Downpatrick, Ballymena, Carrickfergus, Ballyclare and Dungannon.
Civil Service Jobs – Maybe, but, what big town in NI doesn’t have a sizeable civil servant body?
Magherafelt has a hospital that provides numerous rear echelon services, whereas Antrim, Coleraine, Newry, Dungannon, Newry, Craigavon and Downpatrick have full blown hospitals (supposedly…) and there are other smaller hospitals in places like Lisburn.
It also has a fire station, a police station and a courthouse, as do most of the other big commuter belt towns.
So again, numerous places all sharing the same advantages, but with different results for only one place (I think).
Architecture? – Hard no – while it has not yet fallen for the ‘knock down everything and build apartments’ strategy, its architectural vernacular is relatively intact, but not awe inspiring.
I was in Newtownards the other day (week), the town suffers a lot from retail vacancies and derelict buildings, but it has a lot of nice buildings.
So, it’s not the cityscape that draws people and there are quite a few other towns with the makings of a nice townscape (for the time being, no doubt developers will see to their blandfication in due course).
So, perhaps then we should look for what Magherafelt does not have, or where it differs from its fellow box-tickers?
Out of town hyper markets – Magherafelt doesn’t have any supersized supermarkets.
It has a big Lidl and a wee Tesco at the outskirts of the town but no mammoth Asda, no huge Sainsburys-Argos-B&Q retail park, no Tesco Extra.
It has a small sized supermarket in the middle of the town (JC Stewarts) and a shopping centre that is within effortless walking distance of the town centre.
Nearly all of the aforementioned towns (Newry, Ballymena, Dungannon, Newtownards, Cookstown, Coleraine, Larne, Antrim, Downpatrick, Portadown…) have huge supermarkets and/or retail parks away from the town centre, and where they may have them ‘reasonably’ close to the centre (like Sainsbury’s in Ballymena) they are not conveniently close so as to warrant footfall for the town centre.
In fact, a friend of mine who used to run businesses in both Magherafelt and Ballymena told me that the former Magherafelt District council refused planning permission for numerous large supermarkets and de facto retail parks, in his opinion this spared the town from a commercial savaging.
However, since then Magherafelt council was absorbed into Mid Ulster Council. Does this mean that whatever force field is protecting it will fail as the minds that steered poor old Cookstown to its present awful state have their way?
Or can Magherafelt remain ‘unique’?
If so, how?
Well, let us examine more differences between the ‘Felt and the stragglers.
The Civil Service – aside from the council offices, most of Magherafelt’s government jobs are within walking distance of the town – the hospital, the social services (both on the same road), the schools – all a dander away from a café, shop or eatery.
Compare this to e.g. Downpatrick
The council offices – moved outside of the town
The hospital – moved outside of the town
The schools – either moved outside of the town or pupils are prohibited from entering the town at lunch time
(The powers that be seem determined to bring the ‘donut effect’ to Downpatrick, for whatever reason)
As it stands Downpatrick is full of cash only barber shops, cash only take-aways, cash only nail salons and charity shops, and the remaining small independent businesses lie in an uninsurable flood plain (that is further compounded by a raised height retail park that recently was given planning permission to be rebuilt on an EVEN BIGGER SCALE instead of being dismantled and turned into an overflow lough as common sense would recommend).
While we’re at it, let’s look at Antrim town –
Council offices – Outside of town centre
Benefits office – Sort of in the town, but not smack-bang.
Hypermarket – Inconvenient distance from the main street
Retail Park? – Oh my yes – off of a main road, containing everything you’d ever need so as to render the town centre unnecessary
Hospital – Located miles away from the town
Secondary Schools – Outside of the town
So, basically, there’s no need to go to town – Antrim town, from what I can see, has been given the North American urban treatment and is suffering a North American urban centre fate.
Newry
In the Simpsons there is a character known as Donny Don’t.
Basically the school children are encouraged to avoid repeating Donny’s mistakes. I personally consider Newry to be the Donny Don’t of Northern Irish towns.
It has everything for success and lifestyle – proximity to the 2 biggest urban centres on the island, an historic core with beautiful buildings, some nice eateries and pubs, a cathedral, parks, hills, a strong sense of community, canals, a train station, tremendous scenery on the door step.
Yet it’s a complete tip.
In the Netherlands this place would be paradise.
And again, it has more in common with Antrim than Magherafelt in terms of large commercial sites being sited away from the town centre – retail parks, supermarkets, council offices, hospital – all sited away from the town (apart from the retail park with the TK Maxx – but it has a wall of derelict buildings cutting it off from the canal side – an extremely baffling thing to do in planning terms).
We have all seen first-hand that supermarkets can be accommodated in town centre historic buildings e.g. Newcastle’s former Lidl or the former Tesco on Royal Avenue.
If the supermarkets were denied planning permission for out-of-town behemoths then at least one of them would’ve opened shop in the town centre thereby bringing people to the centre, rather than divert them away.
Cookstown
I remember Cookstown used to be thriving – in the 80’s!
East Tyrone was one of the most dangerous places for the British army in the 80’s and as such the main street was like a Cold War German border crossing.
Yet, I recall the markets and wealth of small shops.
I can honestly say that I have not spent a penny in Cookstown’s town centre since they built the retail park that is accessed through what used to be a terraced row and since the mega Asda was built.
And asking around it seems that Cookstown is not in great shape, and tbh it looks awful, they seem to hate their old buildings and would demolish them as soon as look at them.
Is Magherafelt bound for the same fate?
Well, why not?
Here is a property listing that, if accurate, would see an entire row of vernacular buildings flattened and replaced with, um, ‘Ecole de Cookville’ style of architecture (i.e. crap buildings).
https://www.propertypal.com/30-40-church-street-magherafelt/1062759
Likewise, the aforementioned boast of lack of a retail park in Magherafelt is corroding annually.
First there was a Lidl, then a Home Bargains arrived. And now there’s a McDonalds.
Throw a hypermarket in there and Magherafelt stands to go the way of Cookstown.
So, I wonder were there people in the former Magherafelt council who could see the consequences of retail parks and out of town hypermarkets?
Are they now a minority in the Mid Ulster council?
Is it not worth having a case study on Magherafelt and if we find that the reasons for its health are close to my barstool analysis, then, should we not find a way of reversing course on the other towns that have been hollowed out by the seductive paths that I have highlighted?
Is Magherafelt (and indeed Ballycastle) only one Hypermarket and one apartment block away from disaster?
Clearly the high street malaise is not inevitable, so let us find out from whence it flows and take it from there.
PS: While Kilkeel may not be thriving by Magherafelt terms, I will note that on one of the few occasions that I was there I went to the Asda – it however is situated on a main street and one can bimble in to town (which I duly did and spent more money there than I did in Asda – there’s a great fishmonger…)
Found way down the food chain, a ‘middle of the road’ creature that is attacked by creatures from either side of the political jungle, from the bottom feeding ‘Republicanus hypocriticus’ better known as the ‘common shinner’ to the chameleonic ‘Unionisus opportunitisticus’, better known as a ‘Dooper’.
Known to feed on single celled organisms such as ‘Rangerophilus fanus’ and ‘neque Deditionem’ better known as ‘no surrenders’ and occasionally surfacing during rutting season to lock horns with ‘MOPEus Eternus’, better known by their moniker ‘MOPEs’.
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