The Seamus Heaney Centre in Bellaghy: a barracks turns into a beacon of hope

As you drive into the small Plantation village of Bellaghy in Co Derry, the first things you see are a church spire and a large crane.

Under construction is the building which goes by the working title of the Seamus Heaney Centre – a multimillion-pound visitor centre which will include a theatre, library, cafe, education areas and exhibition space commemorating the poet's life and work, as well as facilities for the local community.

“People ask us, ‘Why Bellaghy?’,” says Anne-Marie Campbell, director of Culture and Leisure with Mid Ulster Council, “but for us there was nowhere else it could be built. Bellaghy is where Heaney came from, where he wrote about, and where he’s buried. Nowhere else has that link between a building and the countryside that we have. It has to be here.”

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An artist’s impression of the Seamus Heaney Centre: project officer Oliver McElroy explains that a glass viewing area will allow visitors to look out over the south Derry countryside. “If you’re not from Northern Ireland, it will give you an idea of where Heaney’s inspiration came from,” says McElroy

It’s a year ago this week since the first sod was turned on the project, and with a completion date of summer 2016 fast approaching, the centre is beginning to take shape.

The Heaney family is to donate books and artefacts, and a collection of manuscripts and first editions currently housed in a nearby National Trust property are to be moved to the centre’s library.

The poet’s duffel coat and schoolbag will be displayed near the entrance, and as visitors move around the building, they will be able to listen to Heaney reading his own poems.

Project officer Oliver McElroy explains that a glass viewing area to the side of the exhibition area will allow visitors to look out over the south Derry countryside.

“If you’re not from Northern Ireland, it will give you an idea of where Heaney’s inspiration came from,” says McElroy. “Where did it all soak in from, and how did it go from his brain to his hand, and how did all those poems come about?”

Brian McCormick, the centre manager and Heaney’s nephew, says that, in the longer term, a network of trails will be established to allow visitors to identify the places mentioned in Heaney’s poems.

“The centre will be a focal point for people to go out into the area and see it first-hand. Nobody will ever be able to say they drove past Barney Devlin’s forge, for example, and say they missed it because they didn’t know it was there.”

One of the most distinctive features of the centre is the stone-clad exterior wall. “That’s basalt stone, which to you and me means the Giant’s Causeway,” laughs McElroy. “That stone’s been taken and tumbled off the old perimeter wall, which during the Troubles would have got its fair degree of testing.”

Built on the site of what was once a heavily-fortified police station, many of its features are being incorporated into the new building – including what were once fortified dormitories.

“This structure would once have been all steel and reinforced concrete. It was basically a big cold security structure which was completely blast-proof; it was built to withstand anything,” says McElroy.

“Outside you can still see the old security bollards. Even when we were doing the ground work at the early construction stage, we kept coming across large blocks of concrete. It took us months to get rid of them because they were everywhere under the ground.”

The former bunker has been transformed into a bright, spacious building for use as a resource and youth centre for the local community. “If you ask the village what they want to see, this is it, this is their pulse right here.”

Campbell agrees. “The whole idea of this project is that the community has to own it. They own Seamus Heaney, because he was from here and now he’s buried here, and if they don’t support it, what’s the point of having it in Bellaghy?”

For parish priest Fr Andy Dolan, this community space is a key part of Heaney’s legacy. “All the churches have their own halls, but if this opens communities out to each other a bit, then it will be a job well done.

“It will allow young people from different backgrounds to meet up – as Seamus himself put it, ‘meeting the other side’, and facilitating that is very important to me.”

For all involved, the hope is that the centre will be both a testament to the village’s most famous son and the key to the regeneration of the village.

McCormick estimates that, when finished, the centre, theatre and cafe will sustain up to 15 jobs, and he hopes that visitor numbers will help create and sustain new businesses in the area.

“I’ve a feeling this is going to be something similar to Titanic Belfast in the west,” says McElroy. “The acid test will be when you’re staying in a hotel in Dublin and you look at the information board in the hotel and see the Heaney centre up there alongside the Titanic Belfast. Then we’ve made it.”

Since Heaney’s death just over two years ago, more and more people have begun making the pilgrimage to see his grave at St Mary’s Church in Bellaghy. So far, the visitor’s book inside the church is the only record of the numbers coming to the village.

“It started out as a sympathy book,” explains Fr. Dolan, “and what’s unusual is that the local people sign it too. They write things like, ‘Seamus, we were inspired by you’, and even though this is a country area, where people aren’t too fond of putting their thoughts on paper and letting their neighbours see it, people have no shyness in expressing their feelings in the book.”

This connection with the local community is something Campbell believes makes Bellaghy stand out. “We’re working with the business owners in Bellaghy to try and get them geared up for the opening and, when you talk to them, each of them has a story, and it’s a very personal story. For example, the guy in the fish and chip shop told me how Seamus Heaney used to go in and buy fish and chips in his shop.

“If you go to see Yeats’ grave, nobody’s going to walk down the street and say ‘I met Yeats’, whereas in Bellaghy you can walk down the street and people knew him.”

For Prof Fran Brearton, the director of the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University in Belfast, the centre will help make Heaney’s grave a “literary landmark like Drumcliffe churchyard”.

“It always surprises me when I go to Bellaghy that it’s so real, because the names and places he wrote about have reverberated so far beyond. The achievement of Heaney is that he has changed what that place means and what it stands for, and he’s done it forever. It may have been magical to local people, but Heaney’s gift was to make it magical to the rest of the world.”

“Heaney was proud of where he was from and proud of the people in this area,” says McCormick. “He wrote about this area throughout his life and came back here and visited regularly and was interested in the people here. There was a warmth to Heaney, and we want to make sure throughout the project that that authenticity, and that genuineness, is maintained.”

“It’s a huge responsibility,” emphasises Campbell, “but we’re very proud to be involved. It’s an incredible privilege. I think he would feel quite humbled.”

“He wasn’t ever someone who sought the limelight,” McCormick interjects, “but to see what was previously a very heavily fortified RUC station, with high wire and high walls and CCTV everywhere, transformed to a place that will welcome people from near and far, then I think Seamus Heaney would have been delighted.”

[ midulstercouncil.org/seamusheaney ]