Havelock House, located on the

Ormeau Road Ormeau Road is a road in south Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland. Ormeau Park is adjacent to it. It forms part of the A24. History The road, as currently laid out, dates from the first decades of the 19th century when a bridge was buil ...

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 ...

, is the former headquarters of Wireless Group Ltd (formerly UTV Media), and also UTV, which occupied the building from October 1959 to June 2018. Wireless Group's local radio service U105 was based here from its launch to 2018 when it was transferred to new studios at City Quays 2, where the registered office of Wireless Group and also the studios of UTV (now part of

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) are now located. It is planned that the site will be turned into a build-to-rent residential scheme.

History

Before the building was converted into a television studio complex, Havelock House was the former site of a hemstitching warehouse. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, the building was the billet for troops to provide cover for Belfast's bridges. Ulster Television acquired the premises at the cost of £17,000. Initially, the building contained one studio. A second studio was opened in the building in 1962. Construction of an extension to Havelock House began in 1992 in preparation for the station's new franchise period and its upcoming rebranding. The extension was opened on 4 June 1993, the day the station rebranded itself from Ulster Television to UTV, and the official opening of the extension was performed by former UTV newsreader,

Gloria Hunniford Mary Winifred Gloria Hunniford, OBE (born 10 April 1940) is a Northern Irish television and radio presenter, broadcaster and singer. She is known for presenting programmes on the BBC and ITV, such as '' Rip Off Britain'', and her regular appea ...

. For many years, UTV's studio base at Havelock House was also used by television film crews around the world to process and edit film footage of "

The Troubles The Troubles ( ga, Na Trioblóidí) were an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted about 30 years from the late 1960s to 1998. Also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict, it is sometimes described as an " ...

". ITN reporters were also regularly seen reporting on the rooftop of Havelock House, including former UTV reporter John Irvine. The building was listed for sale in April 2018 for £3,500,000, and was sold in September of the same year to Olympian Homes, who planned to use the building for a build-to-rent scheme. In November 2020, Olympian Homes made an appeal to the Belfast City Council after the council's planning committee had unanimously decided to reject the firm's plans for the site which would have demolished the building to make way for an apartment block. In October 2021, Olympian Homes' appeal was dismissed. UTVhq

Notable productions

The local news programme '' UTV Live'' was broadcast from Studio 1 until June 2018. Studio 2 was used for many years for production of the ''

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'' series, the Friday night chatshow on UTV hosted by Gerry Kelly from 1989-2005. The studio was also used for light entertainment programmes such as ''McKeever'' and May McFettridge specials. Havelock House also housed a smaller studio with a

chroma key Chroma key compositing, or chroma keying, is a visual-effects and post-production technique for compositing (layering) two images or video streams together based on colour hues ( chroma range). The technique has been used in many fields to ...

background, from where short ''UTV News'' bulletins and continuity announcements were broadcast until October 2016. This studio, which formed part of UTV's central technical area, had been in use since 2002 when it replaced Studio 3, another smaller presentation studio used for in-vision continuity and shorter news bulletins. The location of the old central technical area and Studio 3 were completely renovated in January 2003 and converted into office space for UTV Internet, which moved from a leased office site in Bruce Street in March 2003. Among other series recorded in the studios at Havelock House include ''

School Around the Corner ''The School Around the Corner'' was a radio programme aired in the Republic of Ireland beginning at Easter, 1954, when Michael O h-Aodha gave the "idea" his blessing, Seamus Kavanagh took over as producer of the first short series. The producers ...

'', ''McKeever'' and ''All Mixed Up''.

References

{{UTV British television studios Buildings and structures in Belfast ITV offices, studios and buildings UTV (TV channel)