Old Coach Avenue is a residential street in south Belfast, running westwards from Malone Road in the Malone district. The name preserves the memory of the earlier Belfast–Dublin coach route through Malone, associated with the former “Old Dublin Coach Road” which preceded the development of the straighter Lisburn Road in the late 1810s.
The avenue takes its name from the historic coaching corridor which once carried long-distance traffic southwards from Belfast towards Lisburn, Newry, and Dublin. Belfast City Council, in a 2024 report concerning nearby Old Coach Road, described remnants of this earlier route as having “carried traffic from Belfast to Dublin” before being abandoned when the road was diverted during the nineteenth century. The survival of both Old Coach Road and Old Coach Avenue preserves the historical association of the Malone district with this former coaching route.
The wider Malone corridor appears in the Irish Historic Towns Atlas as “Malone Turnpike” in 1778, “[road] to Lisburn” in 1783, and “Malone Road” in 1791. By 1833 the earlier alignment was already being described as the “old road from Lisburn”, indicating that its role as the principal southern route from Belfast had largely ended by then.
The old route remained historically significant because it formed part of the principal overland road between Belfast and Dublin during the coaching era. Belfast–Dublin stagecoach services are recorded from at least 1752, while Bradshaw’s Belfast Directory of 1819 lists regular Royal Mail coach services operating daily between Belfast and Dublin. Although no surviving timetable specifically names Old Coach Avenue, the avenue’s name reflects the enduring local memory of the former coach road through Malone.
The surrounding Malone district later became one of the principal suburban expansion areas of south Belfast during the Victorian and Edwardian periods. By the twentieth century, urban tram and bus services along Malone Road and Lisburn Road had replaced the earlier long-distance coaching traffic.
Belfast City Council, People and Communities Committee, “Public Rights of Way at Old Coach Road”, 5 March 2024.
Royal Irish Academy, Irish Historic Towns Atlas: Belfast Part I to 1840.
I. J. Herring, “Ulster Roads on the Eve of the Railway Age, c.1800–40”, Irish Historical Studies.
Bradshaw’s Belfast Directory (1819).
PRONI Historical Maps Viewer.