CastleCourt is a shopping centre on

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 thor ...

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 Kingdo ...

Northern Ireland Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is variously described as a country, province or region. Nort ...

. It is

's third largest shopping centre after Victoria Square 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 shopping in the North W ...

Derry Derry, officially Londonderry (), is the second-largest city in Northern Ireland and the fifth-largest city on the island of Ireland. The name ''Derry'' is an anglicisation of the Old Irish name (modern Irish: ) meaning 'oak grove'. The ...

. 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 Grand Central Hotel, later renamed the Broadway Central Hotel, was a hotel at 673 Broadway, New York City, that was famous as the site of the murder of financier James Fisk in 1872 by Edward S. Stokes. The hotel collapsed on August 3, 19 ...

. The nature of the development made it a target for the

Provisional IRA The Irish Republican Army (IRA; ), also known as the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and informally as the Provos, was an Irish republicanism, Irish republican paramilitary organisation that sought to end British rule in Northern Ireland, fa ...

: the centre was bombed five times during its construction, four times after it opened, and suffered

incendiary bomb 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, th ...

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

, Derry.

References

External links

castlecourt-uk.com
— official website {{Westfield United Kingdom Shopping centres in Northern Ireland Buildings and structures in Belfast Tourist attractions in Belfast Westfield Group 1980s establishments in Northern Ireland