The developer has been urged to be sensitive turning the former Magdalene Laundry into apartments
The Good Shepherd Centre off Carolan Road in the Ormeau Road area(Image: Belfast Live)
A Sinn Féin local politician has urged developers to be “sensitive” in transforming a former Magdalene laundry at Ormeau Road into apartments.
Alskea, the developers converting a former convent in South Belfast into an £8.6million high-end apartment complex, have acknowledged they could find human remains on the site, as it once homed a highly controversial mother and baby home.
At the June meeting of the Belfast City Council Planning Committee, Sinn Féin Councillor Narasha Brennan asked the developers to work with the council “sensitively” on a “key mother and baby home.”
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Mother and baby homes, or Magdalene Laundries, were a network of institutions where unmarried pregnant women and girls were sent throughout the last century. They were operated by religious orders, primarily but not exclusively, by the Catholic Church and supported by the Irish Freestate, later the Republic, while maintained solely by religious orders in Northern Ireland.
At the Planning Committee, elected representatives unanimously approved an application for the conversion of the former convent to 28 apartments, of one, two and three bedrooms, at the Former Good Shepherd Centre at 511 and 511a Ormeau Road, BT7.
The grade B listed building was built in the 1860s and was run by nuns until 1977. In 2023 an application for conversion to offices was approved, which will run out in two years.
Council officers recommended the application for approval. None of the statutory bodies have objected, but a consultation by the Northern Ireland Environment Agency, an agency within the Stormont Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs, remains outstanding.
The council received six objections from the public. Objectors expressed concerns about the impact on trees and wildlife, traffic generation, overlooking onto nearby houses and impact on water infrastructure.
During the application presentation, a council officer said: “A more recent representation relates to archaeology.”
He said: “This objector seeks to defer the application on the grounds the archaeology impacts have not been fully considered. They refer to the lands to be used for a car park (as being) used for a mother and baby home and Magdalene Laundry children’s home, and adolescent centre.
“(They say) none of these uses are mentioned in the heritage report. There are concerns that there could be burial remains.”
He added: “We have contacted the (Stormont) Historic Environment Division, who have not raised any concerns about archaeology, but we have shown them the objection and asked for their further advice. Delegated authority is asked to deal with this particular issue.”
No affordable housing is proposed as part of the development as the developers state it would make the scheme “financially unviable.” Policy requires housing schemes of five units or more, or sites of 0.1 hectares or greater, to deliver a minimum 20 percent affordable housing. Despite this, council officers recommended the application for approval and councillors approved the plan.
A representative for the applicant said the plan would “deliver vital regeneration and repurposing of a derelict and under-utilised listed building within an area of townscape character.”
He said: “Any works that would be going on, if any remains or anything were found, it would be natural for there to be an immediate halt to that until those were recorded, and done in accordance with HED. So we are more than content to accept the wording of such a condition.”
Sinn Féin Councillor Narasha Brennan said: “On the archaeological thing, the option of the delegated authority is really helpful, given the sensitivity of the information we have got around the history of this site. I would just ask developers to work with officers on this to make sure we deal with it really fairly and sensitively, on what was obviously a key site and mother and baby home.”
The building at Ormeau Road contained a workhouse laundry for girls and women, and was referred to in a recent report on Magdalene Laundries by the two Northern Ireland universities and Stormont.
Amnesty International writes: “Operated by the Good Shepherd Sisters from 1869 until 1977, the facility, known officially as St. Mary’s Home and Laundry, housed thousands of women and girls, often forcing them to work in harsh conditions.”
In the mother and baby homes across the island of Ireland, 80,000 women were subjected to forced labour, many had their children put up for adoption without consent, and babies were exposed to extremely high mortality rates. Women and girls who became pregnant outside of wedlock were forced into these highly secretive institutions.
They were usually detained against their will, separated from their families, subjected to harsh physical labour during late stages of pregnancy, and their children were placed in abusive fostering and often later used as cheap farm hands. 800 children died at a Mother and Baby Home in County Galway, with many bodies found in an unmarked sewage tank.
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