Old Coach Lane is a short residential street in south Belfast whose name preserves the memory of the former Belfast–Dublin coach route through the Malone district. Like nearby Old Coach Road and Old Coach Avenue, the name recalls the earlier southbound road used before the construction of the straighter Lisburn Road in the late 1810s.
The lane’s name reflects the historical importance of the old Malone road corridor, which carried long-distance traffic from Belfast towards Lisburn, Newry, and Dublin during the coaching era. A Belfast City Council report of 2024, discussing surviving sections of nearby Old Coach Road, stated that the former route “carried traffic from Belfast to Dublin” before being abandoned after the diversion of the main road in the nineteenth century. The recurrence of the “Old Coach” name in several nearby streets preserves the local memory of this earlier routeway.
Historical references indicate that the Malone corridor was already an established southern road from Belfast by the eighteenth century. The Irish Historic Towns Atlas records “Malone Turnpike” in 1778, “[road] to Lisburn” in 1783, and “Malone Road” in 1791. By 1833 the route was being described as the “old road from Lisburn”, showing that it had been superseded following the development of the newer Lisburn Road.
Belfast–Dublin stagecoach traffic is recorded from at least 1752, and Bradshaw’s Belfast Directory of 1819 lists regular Royal Mail coach services operating daily between Belfast and Dublin. Although no surviving timetable specifically refers to Old Coach Lane, the street name preserves the historical association of the district with the old coaching route.
The surrounding area later developed as part of the suburban expansion of south Belfast during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, while modern transport routes concentrated on the nearby arterial roads.
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.