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CastleCourt
CastleCourt is a shopping centre on Royal Avenue in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It is Northern Ireland's third largest shopping centre after Victoria Square and Foyleside in Derry. As at 2007 it had approximately 16 million visits a year., and sale densities ranked in the top 10% in the UK. History The centre was built by John Laing on the site of the former Grand Central Hotel. The nature of the development made it a target for the Provisional IRA: the centre was bombed five times during its construction, four times after it opened, and suffered incendiary bomb attacks. It is now the third largest shopping complex in Northern Ireland after the construction of the new Victoria Square shopping centre, which is also located in Belfast, and Foyleside Foyleside Shopping Centre is a shopping centre in Derry, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. Construction started in the early 1990s and the centre opened in 1995. The shopping centre's purpose was to offer a hub for shoppi ...
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Royal Avenue
Royal Avenue is a street in Belfast, Northern Ireland. In the Cathedral Quarter in the heart of Belfast city centre, as well as being identified with the more recent Smithfield and Union Quarter, it has been the city's principal shopping thoroughfare since its establishment in 1881. Today Royal Avenue is one of Belfast's main commercial centres and is home to the £40 million shopping complex Westfield CastleCourt. The top end of Royal Avenue was formerly named John Street and the bottom end was named Hercules Street. Location Royal Avenue is in the Cathedral Quarter. Beginning from the Donegall Place junction with Castle Place and Castle Street, which is the hub of Belfast city centre, the road runs north to the North Street crossing where the former Bank of Ireland once stood. A fire in summer of 2018 caused the front part of the building to burn leaving only the back of the building standing. Royal Avenue then angles northeast to the Donegall Street intersection co ...
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Grand Central Hotel, Belfast
The name Grand Central Hotel Belfast refers to two separate hotels at different locations in the city. The first opened in 1893 and was converted to a military barracks in 1972, before being demolished in the late 1980s. The second is a converted office building nearby, previously known as Windsor House, which was converted to a hotel and opened on 20 June 2018. First Grand Central Hotel The first Grand Central Hotel was located on Royal Avenue in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and opened in 1893. The hotel contained around 200 guest bedrooms and hosted many famous guests, including the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in the 1960s. The hotel was taken over by the British Army in 1972 for use as a military base from which to patrol the city centre during the height of the Troubles. The troops based there were protected by anti-rocket screens constructed around the front of the building on the main street to repel everything from bricks and bottles to paint and blast bombs. One of the ...
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Tourist Attractions In Belfast
Tourism is travel for pleasure or business; also the theory and practice of touring, the business of attracting, accommodating, and entertaining tourists, and the business of operating tours. The World Tourism Organization defines tourism more generally, in terms which go "beyond the common perception of tourism as being limited to holiday activity only", as people "travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure and not less than 24 hours, business and other purposes". Tourism can be domestic (within the traveller's own country) or international, and international tourism has both incoming and outgoing implications on a country's balance of payments. Tourism numbers declined as a result of a strong economic slowdown (the late-2000s recession) between the second half of 2008 and the end of 2009, and in consequence of the outbreak of the 2009 H1N1 influenza virus, but slowly recovered until the COVID-19 ...
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Buildings And Structures In Belfast
The buildings and structures of Belfast, Northern Ireland comprise many styles of architecture ranging from Edwardian through to state-of-the-art modern buildings like the Waterfront Hall. The city's beautiful Edwardian buildings are notable for their display of a large number of sculptures. Many of Belfast's Victorian landmarks, including the main Lanyon Building at Queens University in 1849, were designed by Sir Charles Lanyon. The City Hall, was finished in 1906 and was built to reflect Belfast's City status, granted by Queen Victoria in 1888. The Dome is 53 metres (173 ft) high. Figures above the door are "Hibernia encouraging and promoting the Commerce and Arts of the City".Historic Buildings of Belfast

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Shopping Centres In Northern Ireland
Shopping is an activity in which a customer browses the available goods or services presented by one or more retailers with the potential intent to purchase a suitable selection of them. A typology of shopper types has been developed by scholars which identifies one group of shoppers as recreational shoppers, that is, those who enjoy shopping and view it as a leisure activity.Jones, C. and Spang, R., "Sans Culottes, Sans Café, Sans Tabac: Shifting Realms of Luxury and Necessity in Eighteenth-Century France," Chapter 2 in ''Consumers and Luxury: Consumer Culture in Europe, 1650-1850'' Berg, M. and Clifford, H., Manchester University Press, 1999; Berg, M., "New Commodities, Luxuries and Their Consumers in Nineteenth-Century England," Chapter 3 in ''Consumers and Luxury: Consumer Culture in Europe, 1650-1850'' Berg, M. and Clifford, H., Manchester University Press, 1999 Online shopping has become a major disruptor in the retail industry as consumers can now search for product ...
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Foyleside Shopping Centre
Foyleside Shopping Centre is a shopping centre in Derry, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. Construction started in the early 1990s and the centre opened in 1995. The shopping centre's purpose was to offer a hub for shopping in the North West of Ireland. The shopping centre is built into the centre of the city and although it is not on the bank, it does overlook the River Foyle. Proposals In 2014, it was announced that developers had approached Derry City Council with the intention of developing a new Foyleside block which would include an extra 235,000 square footage of retail space, as well as a nine screen cinema and of office space. This has the potential to create 500 construction jobs and 300 permanent jobs if allowed to proceed. This development would cost in the region of £100 million. Further to this Minister for Regional Development, Conor Murphy has hinted that he would welcome any plans for the relocation of the current railway station to the east bank of the ...
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The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of ''The Guardian'' in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of ''The Guardian'' free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for ''The Guardian'' the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK. The editor-in-chief Katharine Viner succeeded Alan Rusbridger in 2015. Since 2018, the paper's main news ...
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Incendiary Device
Incendiary weapons, incendiary devices, incendiary munitions, or incendiary bombs are weapons designed to start fires or destroy sensitive equipment using fire (and sometimes used as anti-personnel weaponry), that use materials such as napalm, thermite, magnesium powder, chlorine trifluoride, or white phosphorus. Though colloquially often known as bombs, they are not explosives but in fact are designed to slow the process of chemical reactions and use ignition rather than detonation to start or maintain the reaction. Napalm for example, is petroleum especially thickened with certain chemicals into a 'gel' to slow, but not stop, combustion, releasing energy over a longer time than an explosive device. In the case of napalm, the gel adheres to surfaces and resists suppression. Pre-modern history A range of early thermal weapons were utilized by ancient, medieval/post-classical and early modern armies, including hot pitch, oil, resin, animal fat and other similar compounds. Subs ...
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Belfast
Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingdom and the second-largest in Ireland. It had a population of 345,418 . By the early 19th century, Belfast was a major port. It played an important role in the Industrial Revolution in Ireland, briefly becoming the biggest linen-producer in the world, earning it the nickname "Linenopolis". By the time it was granted city status in 1888, it was a major centre of Irish linen production, tobacco-processing and rope-making. Shipbuilding was also a key industry; the Harland and Wolff shipyard, which built the , was the world's largest shipyard. Industrialisation, and the resulting inward migration, made Belfast one of Ireland's biggest cities. Following the partition of Ireland in 1921, Belfast became the seat of government for Northern Ireland ...
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Provisional Irish Republican Army
The Irish Republican Army (IRA; ), also known as the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and informally as the Provos, was an Irish republican paramilitary organisation that sought to end British rule in Northern Ireland, facilitate Irish reunification and bring about an independent, socialist republic encompassing all of Ireland. It was the most active republican paramilitary group during the Troubles. It saw itself as the army of the all-island Irish Republic and as the sole legitimate successor to the original IRA from the Irish War of Independence. It was designated a terrorist organisation in the United Kingdom and an unlawful organisation in the Republic of Ireland, both of whose authority it rejected. The Provisional IRA emerged in December 1969, due to a split within the previous incarnation of the IRA and the broader Irish republican movement. It was initially the minority faction in the split compared to the Official IRA, but became the dominant faction by 1972. T ...
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John Laing Plc
John Laing Group plc is a British investor, developer and operator of privately financed, public sector infrastructure projects such as roads, railways, hospitals and schools through Public-Private Partnership (PPP) and Private Finance Initiative (PFI) arrangements. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index until the court approved the acquisition of the company by KKR in September 2021. History The business can trace its roots back to 1848 when James Laing (born in 1816), along with his wife Ann Graham, and some employees whom they had hired, built a house on a plot of land that they had bought for £30 in Cumberland. The £150 proceeds from the first house financed the building of the next two houses on the same plot of land, one of which (Caldew House in Sebergham) was kept by the Laing family to live in. The family and the business later moved near Carlisle. When James Laing died in 1882, his son, John Laing (born in 1842) too ...
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Castle Court, Belfast, July 2010 (09)
A castle is a type of fortified structure built during the Middle Ages predominantly by the nobility or royalty and by military orders. Scholars debate the scope of the word ''castle'', but usually consider it to be the private fortified residence of a lord or noble. This is distinct from a palace, which is not fortified; from a fortress, which was not always a residence for royalty or nobility; from a ''pleasance'' which was a walled-in residence for nobility, but not adequately fortified; and from a fortified settlement, which was a public defence – though there are many similarities among these types of construction. Use of the term has varied over time and has also been applied to structures such as hill forts and 19th-20th century homes built to resemble castles. Over the approximately 900 years when genuine castles were built, they took on a great many forms with many different features, although some, such as curtain walls, arrowslits, and portcullises, were ...
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