Old Coach Road is a short road and surviving historic route fragment in the Upper Malone district of south Belfast, linking with Upper Malone Road near Malone Heights. The modern street preserves part of an earlier southbound road corridor from Belfast towards Lisburn and Dublin. By the nineteenth century this older line had been superseded by the straighter Lisburn Road, but surviving sections remained in local use and later acquired the descriptive name Old Coach Road.
A Belfast City Council report of 5 March 2024 described the surviving paths as remnants of the former coach road:
“In 1998 an investigation was begun into the nature of paths which run along remnants of the Old Coach Road. This road carried traffic from Belfast to Dublin but was abandoned when the road was diverted in the 1800s. Remnants of the road continued to be used and subsequently a number of recreational facilities were developed on the land including Malone Playing Fields.” — Belfast City Council, People and Communities Committee, “Public Rights of Way at Old Coach Road”, 5 March 2024.
Historical references suggest that the corridor formed part of the earlier Malone–Lisburn road system. The Irish Historic Towns Atlas indexes the route as “Malone Turnpike” in 1778, “[road] to Lisburn” in 1783, “Malone Road” in 1791, and significantly as the “old road from Lisburn” by 1833. This terminology strongly indicates that the route had already lost its status as the principal southern road from Belfast by the time of the first Ordnance Survey.
Evidence for long-distance coaching on the Belfast–Dublin route dates from at least 1752, when a Belfast–Dublin stagecoach service is recorded in transport history. A Belfast directory of 1819 lists regular Royal Day Mail and Royal Night Mail coach services between Belfast and Dublin, departing daily from Castle Street. Although surviving timetables do not explicitly name Old Coach Road, historians conclude that the older Malone route almost certainly carried such traffic before the diversion to the newer Lisburn Road between about 1817 and 1819.
The development of the Lisburn Road as a straighter arterial route in the late 1810s, followed by the opening of the Belfast–Lisburn railway in 1839, reduced the importance of the older coach road. By 1833 the route was already being described as the “old road from Lisburn”.
Later public transport in the district concentrated on the main Malone Road corridor rather than the surviving remnant itself. Tram services operated along Malone Road by about 1906, while modern bus services now use the nearby arterial routes.
The modern street name Old Coach Road is attested in a Belfast street list by 1967, although the precise date of official naming has not yet been identified.
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.
Lennon Wylie, Belfast Street Directory (1967).