Around and about the field of dreams Multi-Cache

In May 1965, in an article entitled “Life in 1981”, Alf McCreary, the 'New City Correspondent' for the Belfast Telegraph wrote of “a family from London who appreciated living in Craigavon because of its marina, University and airport. They like the new city for practical reasons; it is safe for kids, it has steady jobs, they are near beautiful countryside.”

At the start of the 1960's with traditional industries in decline, nothing taking their place and with housing in much of Belfast entrapped in tribal politics, the Stormont government came up with an idea to try and de-magnetise Belfast by luring some of the surplus population to a completely new city joining Lurgan and Portadown.

In the supposed forward-thinking spirit of the times people saw planning as a science that would solve all their problems. The notion of planning new cities and new forms of infrastructure was seen as progress. Following on from projects such as Milton Keynes and Cumbernauld (outside Glasgow), Stormont’s Ministry of Commerce adopted a “field of dreams” approach to plan a new city and private sector from scratch, with the mantra ‘if you build it they will come’.

A new city of 200,000 would be built linking Lurgan and Portadown with two phases, Brownlow in the eastern sector beside Lurgan and Mandeville on the western sector beside Portadown, and a new purpose-built city centre between the two.

The onset of the troubles, lack of jobs and divestiture of the Craigavon Development Commission to numerous direct rule NIO departments in the mid-1970s resulted in Craigavon running out of steam. The Brownlow sector of Craigavon was mostly finished but the Mandeville sector which would link Craigavon to Portadown was barely even started, leaving the new Craigavon City Centre on the western edge of what has today become Craigavon.

In 1974, in a move smacking of desperation, the government tripled the one hundred and fifty pounds allowance paid to people who moved to Craigavon, making it more of a bribe than an allowance, and helped cement the concept of the “moonlight flit” as something unique to Craigavon – move down from Belfast, take the money and abscond back to Belfast in the middle of the night.

Roundabouts ultimately define the infrastructure of Craigavon. There are 17, each with their own individual number or letter. The gap where the Mandeville sector should be creates a strange landscape - underused roads and over-grown cycle paths mark out an empty grid where a town should be. At some roundabouts, such as this one, possible exits are blocked off or back onto fields. A waste of money and the destruction of good farms is ultimately the price paid for the utopian vision of 1960’s politicians, bureaucrats and planners, with Lurgan suffering more than Portadown, which has remained in splendid (and happy) isolation.

The Cache