{"id":663636,"date":"2026-06-29T02:20:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T02:20:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/663636\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T02:20:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T02:20:14","slug":"downpatrick-large-blaze-at-former-convent-building-deliberate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/663636\/","title":{"rendered":"Downpatrick: Large blaze at former convent building &#8216;deliberate&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The building is attached to St Patrick&#8217;s Church in the town. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">NIFRS said the incident was scaling back but they planned to remain at the location for a number of hours.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">SDLP councillor Conor Galbraith who was at the scene said: &#8220;It doesn&#8217;t look like it could spread, with most of the fire located on the building&#8217;s roof, which appears to be caved in&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A priest had been ordained there on Sunday afternoon, &#8220;just hours before the blaze,&#8221; he said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He added that it was sad to see the fire in &#8220;such a historical part of our town&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Galbraith&#8217;s party colleague, Colin McGrath, described the blaze as &#8220;difficult to watch&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The building is attached to St Patrick&#8217;s Church in the town. NIFRS said the incident was scaling back&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":663637,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-663636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663636\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/663637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}