Barrys amusements, Bangor. An absolute Aladdins cave of olde worlde machines. I think every kid of a certain age would have spent some of their weekend within it. The change machine gave you twenty old pennies for a new 10p coin. One day I put 10p in and the machine kept chugging out the pennies until it emptied. How my collar was not felt that day by Minnie Delino I shall never know. A once glorious building and place to visit. Sadly destroyed by fire just prior to being listed. The upper floors held a ballroom etc. Firefighters attending the fire on the evening of the 10th December 1984 entered the upper rooms and found some of them not to have been opened in decades...full of boxes of chocolate etc. Once again Bangor Council sat on their laurels.. Extract - On the night of 10 December a red glow lit up Bangor Bay when a severe malicious fire destroyed outbuildings and the old ballroom behind the main structure. Despite reports in the media that the building had been gutted and that the well-known local landmark of Barrys was now gone for ever, the work of our team in blocking up all major openings at the rear of the building ensured that the fire never reached the interior of the listed portion, and the building control officers again declared the building to be safe. Ironically however, the planning sub-committee of the Borough Council had voted the previous week not to support the listing after all. The decision was extremely close, being decided by a casting vote, and it is most unfortunate that councillors were not aware at the time that the building had been cleaned out and was about to be repainted. However when the outcome of that meeting was made known, our team had to abandon the scheme, at the request of the DoE. It was most frustrating that the council voted before seeing the result of the teams work. There has been very considerable interest and public support for our campaign to save this building, but as we go to press its fate still hangs in the balance. The DoE in Northern Ireland has never to date listed a building against the wishes of a local council - although in England it happens not infrequently, since it is considered that architectural merit is not something many local councillors are trained to judge - and unless the undoubted public support for restoring the building is brought to bear on the Borough Council, the listing is likely to be rescinded. A planning application for listed building consent to demolish lodged in December has been strongly opposed by the Society, on the grounds that quite apart from the merits of the existing building, it is not in a dangerous condition and there are no plans for a replacement building; we have however, supported the proposed change of use aspect of the application, for a shopping arcade with flats above - pointing out that this is entirely compatible with the retention of the listed building. Stop Press: Barrys has been demolished, following a further meeting immediately before Christmas between North Down Council and representatives of the Historic Buildings Branch, at which the Council insisted on delisting. This permitted immediate demolition without awaiting the outcome of the planning application and gives the planners negligible control over any replacement building on this important location. Where a fine, if tattered, Victorian building once stood, Messrs Gilmore have donated an imposing gap-site to the people of Bangor.
Posted on: Thu, 16 Oct 2014 10:20:23 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015