Downpatrick is a strange place. It is like something from ancient Greek mythology where the Gods both bless and curse a place. Blessed in that it is a handsome place; the old streets have old world charm potential about them. English street, being the Georgian street containing the Cathedral, the view and ‘the grave’ (supposedly containing St Patrick, St Brigid and St Columcille), a 17th century coaching house and some cobbled side streets, it is very much a potential movie scene for English Georgian era dramas. Irish street has an impressive tract of Georgian architecture and in particular a very quaint stretch of ‘old Ireland’ at the Catholic Church end of Irish/Stream Street.
Scotch street, while the least impressive architecturally at least has the benefit of pedestrianisation and the potential for a strip of pavement cafes.
Downpatrick is ringed by hills, is in walking distance of the beautiful Quoile river, Mound of Down and Inch abbey. A 15 minute drive in any Lecale-bound direction will bring you invariably to beautiful villages (Killough, Ardglass, Strangford), castles, coast or viewpoints such as St Patrick’s mountain and it’s a mere 20 min drive to Newcastle – a jewel in the crown of Irish coastal towns.
Another 5 minutes would see one in the breathtaking Tollymore forest park and a minor detour on the way home would see one driving home via the handsome village of Castlewellan, with its collection of unusually intact Victorian terraces and crescents (and obscene number of pubs, not to mention a forest park just behind the main street)
It has woodland on the outskirts, a heritage railway and the fascinating area of Ballydugan, consisting of a hotel converted from a mill, a cottage cluster, a heritage pub on a lakeside, a massive memorial to a locally murdered Viking king and, inexplicably, a medieval village where weekend Vikings like to convene.
It has an impressive assortment of schools, a shiny new hospital, a DVA centre, a visitors’ centre, an arts centre, a museum in a structurally intact 18th century prison & yard, a golf course and the oldest race course in Ireland.
“If these are the blessings, then what are the curses?”
The curses are as numerous as they are unnecessary.
First of all, on account of its municipal resources and infrastructure it has punishingly high business rates.
For example, a tiny one room shop on the corner of Market St and Irish St (with no running water) was briefly serving as a wool shop. Somehow this attracted business rates of 500 pounds per month.
Couple this with the rent and the electricity costs as well as just trying to earn a wage akin to a minimum wage job then we are talking a serious amount of wool to be shifted every month.
A restaurant in the old hunting rooms on English street supposedly had rates of 500 pounds per week. Again, on top of rent, energy costs, materials and staff. How can any medium sized town hope to provide such traffic to support a restaurant facing such bills?
Unsurprisingly such punishing rates leave a trace in the form of boarded-up shops, charity shops, betting/gaming shops, high street brands and cash-only take-aways; combined these are in the unfortunate end of the high street barometer of ill health.
To add an element of farce to the circumstances that theoretically justify the rates the hospital was stripped of facilities during Covid, it no longer has full maternity services and no longer has an A&E. So in the event of near death or near birth one must make one’s way to either Newry (1hr) or Dundonald (1hr with traffic)
Bafflingly, a retail park was somehow permitted to be built on the site of a drained lough. This natural drainage area is now a tarmacked zone consisting of an ASDA, McDonalds, Costa Coffee, Harry Cory, Halfords and a few other high street names.
Map – On the bottom left is the lough as it was 200 years ago. Most of the flooded Market Street shops and the ASDA retail park are located within this watery boundary
The business rates for this retail area are less than the town centre, so businesses are drawn to here. As are customers. You can get everything you want in this retail park without having to go into town. And this is generally the case. And even if you wanted to walk to town there is not direct route, only a circuitous route out of the park and back along the main road. In fact, there WAS short cut to the main road but it’s now closed off (The crow’s flight distance from ASDA to the centre is actually only 200m or so but the actual path is closer to 500m). There is an abandoned lane behind the former ASDA petrol station that could be used in theory, but…
As for the drainage, now that the water has less of an area to drain into it famously spilled into the town centre’s main street of Market Street on Halloween ‘23. This wiped out practically every high street brand shop in the lower part of the street which has now stripped the street of importance, to the extent that even Boots is pulling out soon.
Many of the independent shops couldn’t have flood insurance because the insurance companies correctly estimated the risk. And those that could avail of flood insurance could not avail of (yet to arrive) government help.
The Return of the Lough
Now the shopping centre is empty while ASDA launches a charm offensive to rebuild a similar sized shop on the very same site that
a/ was catastrophically damaged in the flood
b/ potentially holds the key to safeguarding the town against future flooding
Politics aside, it is clearly in the town’s interest to either move ASDA (or some of it) into the abandoned shopping centre or to stay away altogether and in any case dig a relief well on the site of the current abandoned ASDA site.
If this re-opening comes to be then the few remaining grocery stores that have seen an upturn in their business since ASDA closed will see the departure of the silver lining that is effectively holding the town together.
Why would any councillor in their right mind give permission for such an enterprise?
Meanwhile, some of the flooded businesses have moved to higher ground such as Scotch street:
“So the potential for a pedestrianized Scotch street full of shops and cafes as seen in the movie ‘Whole Lotta Sole’ (starring Colm Meaney and Brendan Fraser) surely remains?”
Scotch Street
Only in theory.
In reality the landlords who own many of the commercial properties are scrambling to convert them into bedsits or small apartments (inevitably to host workers for the nearby meat plants). Council policy in theory forbids such moves, but NMD council have seemingly set the ball rolling by granting permission for the old barbers to be converted to a bedsit so a precedent has potentially been set. Landlords only have to raise their rent prices to unreasonable levels and say to the council that no one wants to rent a commercial property, so, turning the properties into accommodation is the only option. – So any aspiring shopkeeper or café owner will struggle to find premises.
Couple this with the parking situation, where both car parks flanking Scotch street are paid parking, so we have the scene where the car parks do not attract sufficient traffic due so as to warrant people to park there and amble in to town (past non-existent cafes) and at night time the bedsit residents park on the street itself as it is free and the parks are not.
So the pedestrianized zone often holds more cars than either of the two neighbouring car parks at night (forcing pedestrians on to the middle of the street putting them at the mercy of cars breaking the pedestrian zone rules because such ‘rules’ are not enforced).
“But what about the tourism potential??”
Downpatrick has no hotel, other than the accommodation offered by the (very splendid) coaching house on English Street, Denvir’s.
Downpatrick is so close to Newcastle that it’s difficult to compete and even if a large hotel could exist to service the various local events and less prepared tourists then the hotel would be subject to the same asphyxiating business rates described earlier.
How can one honestly approach prospective investors for a new hotel project knowing that the business rates will make it non-viable?
The tourists that do come seem to park at the visitors’ centre, traipse to the Cathedral and then go back to the bus. They could do a circuit of sorts but there is little encouragement from the visitors’ centre to do so, in fact, the tourist centre doesn’t even seem to have a map of Downpatrick so a tourist won’t really know where to go other than by thumbing through the multitude of leaflets.
In fact, the tourist info office in the centre is actually a Specsavers with a few leaflets strategically set about the room.
The wonderful museum in the old jail is shamefully quiet and underutilised.
“Office work then? It’s the biggest town in the Area!”
The gods thought of that.
On the Belfast side of DP is a business park which offers office accommodation for lesser business rates and a fraction of the traffic (DP centre for some reason has no roundabouts so the traffic moves slowly unlike e.g. Magherafelt which while being a traffic soaked town nonetheless the traffic there constantly moves thanks to the ‘new town’ number of roundabouts). So, why would you move into the traffic choked, paid parking town centre when there’s a cheaper and more convenient option?
Even the business centre, designed to encourage business growth in Downpatrick, is situated there, not in Downpatrick.
Down Business Centre – Not in Downpatrick
“Okay then, there must be government services that provide jobs and services and passing trade?”
Yes. And no. The hospital was moved to the outskirts of the town, so no longer within walking distance. So its contribution to the town centre is now mainly thru-traffic.
The High school off of English street effectively props up several eateries and sweetie shops. But it is due to move outside of DP next year. So, hundreds of spenders per day will be lost to the town centre.
The adjacent benefits office was moved away from this street to a location more convenient to McDonalds/ASDA
There is scope for the schools on Saul Street to feed potential cafes and eateries on Scotch Street, but again, see above regarding landlords’ discretion regarding the easier path of bedsits.
“So, what to do?”
That is the question. It has so much potential but so many of the management decisions seem to act against the good of the town.
It certainly needs investment. But at a basic, quicker and cheaper level it needs things that should have been there in the first place:
Holistic planning restrictions, lower business rates, free parking on the Scotch Street car parks and a few roundabouts. That’s it.
A railway would be nice (this would bring commuters into the town on their way to Belfast or Dublin, but this is pie-in-the-sky optimism) as would a government sponsored revamp of old buildings but on a more immediate and practical scale the businesses just need to be allowed to breathe, in terms of business rates, accommodation and the baffling policy of promoting out-of-town competition.
Is that really too much to ask?
If you have suggestions for improving the town or wish to see more sense applied to planning decisions there then here is the contact email for the council in charge of the town: [email protected]
Please tell them to think about the implications of their decisions, planning or otherwise.
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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