Cathedral Building fire: Businesses speak out one year after blaze

It has been one year since fire devastated a listed building in the heart of Belfast's Cathedral Quarter.

At about 05:30 BST on 3 October 2022, a blaze ripped through the Old Cathedral Building - home to several businesses and a creative space for artists.

More than 60 fire personnel spent hours at the scene helping to bring the fire under control.

One man has been charged with arson with intent to endanger life, burglary and possession of a Class B drug.

A year on, BBC News NI spoke to some of the building's former tenants and surrounding business owners

Tina Calder, owner of media agency Excalibur Press, occupied four offices on the old tea merchant building's first floor.

She said she spent the first few months in the wake of the fire in "survival mode", before being able to take in the gravity of the loss.

"For us, the damage has rolled into the tens of thousands of pounds in actual money," she said.

The company received some funding to replace equipment, but it did not stretch far enough.

"I suppose you could say we're sitting at probably upwards of £67k in terms of our losses financially, and that will include loss of business and the cost of moving around," she added.

Despite a business-as-usual mentality among staff, Tina said the fire caused a "reputational knock", for the company, leading to it missing out on bigger jobs due to a perceived lack of resources or capacity.

A few months after the fire, Tina was allowed into her former premises for the first time, to confront the reality of what happened head on.

"We knew so much was going to be ruined," she recalled. "But, for me, I needed the closure - I needed to be able to see it and touch it and feel it and know that it was wrecked.

"After the salvage, there was this period of realisation of what had happened and it was this period of like: 'Oh my God, I have actually lost everything.'"

One miracle amid the wreckage came with the discovery her physical journalism archive, containing almost 20 years of interviews and bylines, mostly intact.

Excalibur Press has now made its home on the sixth floor of Belfast Central Library, a stone's throw away from their previous hub.

But Tina is hopeful staff can return to the old Cathedral Building once it is restored.

After the fire, freelance illustrator Elly Makem described himself as a creative refugee.

Not only had he lost his workspace, but his sketchbooks and computer had been destroyed by the water used to put out the blaze.

"I had my own work on but I was definitely in a very emotional processing stage of trying to comprehend everything that had happened," he said.

"Sometimes, still, I don't think it's really hit me."

After being offered a space and a part-time gig in a nearby illustration agency, Elly found his luck began to turn.

"My practice has gone well. I'm doing a solo show towards the end of the year and I've had work featured in the Guardian in the last year," he said.

"I've been lucky that it's turned out this way."

The fire was a catalyst for highlighting the lack of affordable workspaces for artists in Belfast and a protest was held just four days later.

It was "quite an emotional day", Elly recalled.

"I think it was just a place to put our grief and our anger about it because obviously these things are quite tragic and they just happen," he said. "But we were quite frustrated as well about the inhospitably of the city as practising artists."

In the aftermath of the fire, creatives in the building and further afield leaned on each other for support.

"We ended up having a weekly film night at mine where we just sat watching Erin Brockovich and a range of early noughties films just as this kind of coping mechanism, and just kind of pulled each other through it," Elly added.

Elly has been creating pieces that will culminate in a solo exhibition in Belfast's ArtCetera Studio in November.

"I'm really establishing myself more as a queer artist and a queer illustrator in the city and creating work that reflects that," he added.

"I think when you have something like that and its quite a powerful loss, it really makes you re-evaluate who you are and that's what I'm really trying to explore."

It is not only the tenants of Cathedral Building who have been dealing with the fire's knock-on effects.

Donagh McGoveran owns the Centra next to the listed building and was forced to close its doors for almost two weeks as structural assessments were carried out.

When the shop eventually reopened, restrictions remained in place on Donegall Street.

"For a long time there was no traffic on the road, and there was a lot of pedestrians having to navigate around the [scaffolding]," he told BBC News NI.

"It took us a long time to recover anywhere back to the sort of level where we were pre-fire. To be honest, it was probably into this year before we started going back to the levels we were seeing before the fire, just with the level of disruption."

Donagh said he was hopeful work could begin soon to restore Cathedral Building to its former glory.

"Nobody wants a derelict burnt-out building, next door to them," he said.

In the aftermath of the fire Damien Corr, manager of the Cathedral Quarter's Business Improvement District (Bid), helped to relocate those in the building who had nowhere to go.

"We understood that [for] these people, everything they had was in that building - they were literally watching it go up," he said.

"That building was full of creative, artistic people and, in our opinion, they are a very important part of Cathedral Quarter."

Belfast Central Library offered up their sixth floor for one year, free of charge, to those who found themselves displaced - a move that Damien described as "the best news".

"The big thing for us was that it was important that this creativity, these people, should not for the sake of few pounds move on," Damien said.

"It was important for us and them that they continued with their creativity and continued to do the things they'd been doing in the Cathedral Quarter.

"They're still working, employing people and being creative in this, what we consider [to be], the best part of the city."