Ardmore Avenue
First recorded: 1943 Belfast Street Directory
Location: Off Finaghy Road North, BT10, South-West Belfast
Townland: Finaghy
Background
Ardmore Avenue is situated in the Finaghy area of South-West Belfast, just off Finaghy Road North and close to the railway station. The street was developed in the early 1940s and is first listed in the 1943 Belfast Street Directory, with multiple residences already recorded.
At the time, Finaghy was outside the Belfast city boundary (then within the Lisburn Rural District), and the area was not officially incorporated into the city until 1965. Ardmore Avenue was part of a broader suburban expansion known as the Ardmore Estate, which included adjacent streets such as Ardmore Park and Ardmore Park South. Most of the housing in this estate was completed shortly after the Second World War, during the housing boom of the mid-1940s.
The development was led by Charles Hutchison, a local builder, who was also associated with a residence known as Ardmore House located near the entrance to the new avenue.
Origin of the Name
The name Ardmore comes from the Irish “Aird Mhór”, meaning “great height” or “high place.” It is also the name of several places in Ireland, most famously a coastal village in County Waterford.
In this case, the name may have been influenced by a residence called Ardmore House, which stood at the head of what became Ardmore Avenue. A 1939 newspaper announcement in the Belfast News-Letter references Ardmore House, Finaghy, confirming the property’s existence before the development of the Ardmore Estate. The house was later linked to Charles Hutchison, the developer of the surrounding streets, and may have lent its name to the estate.
While no official naming decision has been found in surviving records, the association between Ardmore House and the later streets is supported by location and naming customs of the period — it was typical at the time for new housing developments to adopt the names of existing properties in the area.
Conclusion
Ardmore Avenue was developed in the early 1940s as part of the postwar expansion of suburban Belfast. The street may take its name from Ardmore House, a local residence that predated the estate, with the Irish name Aird Mhór (“great height”) providing an attractive and resonant identity. Today, Ardmore Avenue forms part of the residential fabric of Finaghy and reflects the naming and building patterns of a transformative period in Belfast’s growth.