Merville Garden Village
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Merville Garden Village is a post-war housing project at Whitehouse, Newtownabbey, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, UK. It consists of 256 apartments, 28 cottage flats, 146 houses, garages and a row of shops at the entrance to the Village at Shore Road. It was completed in 1950.
The Village was the idea of flourishing builder, Thomas Arlow McGrath, who formed Ulster Garden Villages Limited in 1946. Merville Garden Village is an example of a French architectural influence, having a dual carriageway boulevard running through its centre, with avenues of houses, cottage flats and apartments running off either side. It is built in a similar style to the Garden City Movement initiated by the English town-planner Sir Ebeneezer Howard in the late-1800s.
The eminent E. (Edward) Prentice Mawson FRIBA, PPILA, MTPI (1895-1954), a graduate of the legendary School of Fine Arts in Paris, was the Consultant Architect of all of McGrath's pioneering Garden Village schemes in Ulster. Merville was designated a Conservation Area in late-June 1995 by the Department of the Environment for Northern Ireland, the only designated neighbourhood in Newtownabbey borough and second designated area in the context of North Belfast.
Because of its avant-garde structural and landscape design, Merville Garden Village was a magnate to many distinguished artists, including Sir Stanley Spencer CBE RA (1891-1959) and John F. Hunter OBE RUA (1893-1951).
It has always been a popular area for commuters to Belfast, being convenient to road, motorways and bus links.
Two local residents, Patricia Pepper and Stephen Hamilton, leaders of Merville Residents' Association, one of the oldest constituted community organisations in the Province, have been highly successful in the restoration of Merville House, the age-old residence of the original Merville estate of which the Village was built around and takes its name. The House was officially re-opened on Thursday 27th April 2006 by the promient Belfast community activist Baroness May Blood MBE.
Merville House is now of the key buildings in the sprawling borough of Newtownabbbey and north Belfast and is a popular choice for community, civic, corporate and private functions.
