Donegall Road - Overview

Overview

The eastern side the road and the streets leading from it, are predominantly Protestant and include the well-known Sandy Row and The Village areas. The Village, an area centred on the loyalist section of Broadway and vaguely conforming to the upper half of the Protestant section of the road, was said to have been given the name by African-American GIs stationed at a base on Maldon Street during the Second World War, who described their occasional trips to the shops in the area as "going to the village". Previously the area was locally known by a number of names including Broadway, Donegall Road, Blackstaff, Linfield and Windsor but the Village name caught on and is still in common usage. The Greater Village Regeneration Trust extends the definition further to cover the entire Protestant part of the road as well as Sandy Row.

Most of the housing is of the 'two up, two down' (many of them converted) red-bricked terraced variety. The area is mostly working class, but has become a cachement area for student rental accommodation due to its close proximity to Queen's University. Across Broadway in West Belfast the demographics change as the road forms the southern border of the almost exclusively Roman Catholic St. James area. Located where this section of the road meets the Broadway intersection is the Park Centre, a shopping centre built on the former site of Celtic Park, the home of the now defunct Belfast Celtic. The roundabout at this intersection is also home to Rise, a huge spherical metal sculpture completed in 2011.

The road provides access to the Belfast City Hospital and the City Hospital railway station. Travelling outwards from the city centre also takes one to the Broadway entrance of the Royal Victoria Hospital. The road gets particularly congested at peak times. It is bordered by the Lisburn Road, the "Golden Mile" and Sandy Row.

A number of churches are to be found both on the road itself and the adjacent streets. Broadway Gospel Hall, St Simon's Church of Ireland, Donegall Road Methodist Church, Donegall Road Gospel Hall, Richview Presbyterian, St Aidan's Church Hall, Church of the Nazarene on Roseland Place and the William Tyndale Memorial Free Presbyterian Church on Donegall Avenue.