Row over €190m new road through landscape that inspired Heaney

A controversial €190 million dual carriageway bisecting the landscape that inspired the writings of Seamus Heaney has been given the go-ahead. Part of the new A6 in Co Derry is to run through the lands of Anahorish and Mossbawn, the Nobel laureate's family home until 1953.

Earlier this month, approaching the third anniversary of Heaney's death, Minister for Infrastructure Chris Hazzard of Sinn Féin said the Randalstown-Castledawson project would proceed, with construction due to begin in October.

However, it has provoked a backlash from those who believe it will irrevocably damage the places that came to life in Heaney's poetry, Anahorish, the Broagh, Hillhead, Lagan's Road and the Strand at Lough Beg among them.

Heaney himself had been vocally opposed to a previous incarnation of the project. In 2007 he told the Daily Telegraph: "My feeling was that when I saw the possible direction of the motorway, I thought there was an alternative possibility to take it through an old aerodrome where there is an industrial estate and so on, which wouldn't be as much of a wound on the ecology."

Besides environmental concerns, there are those regarding the potential damage it might inflict on the legacy of the poet and his deep attachment to the landscape. The area is where Heaney spent much of his life and is found at the centre of works including Anahorish, Death of a Naturalist, Blackberry-Picking and The Strand at Lough Beg.

"With any great poet or literary figure it's all down to posterity. There is no way of telling what the cultural damage would be," said Stephen Connolly, poet and PhD student at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen's University Belfast. "It is an area synonymous with Seamus Heaney, most definitely his early poems, and has been a constant feature throughout his writing life. It is the imaginative centre of Heaney's work and Heaney's world. It is of great cultural significance if you believe that Heaney is a significant cultural figure in the literature of Ireland. "

The area is already a place of pilgrimage. Prof Fran Brearton, director of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, said tours of the landscape may have tied in with visits to the Seamus Heaney HomePlace centre, celebrating the life of the poet, due to open later this month in nearby Bellaghy.

“It is to do with legacy and protecting a priority landscape, but unfortunately that’s something that is very hard to legislate for,” she said. “It seems to me rather short-sighted. You are not putting one little road through, you are putting a massive dual carriageway through.”

Mr Hazzard did not directly address the controversy but in a statement said a “comprehensive appraisal” of the road scheme had been conducted. He said there was an environmental impact assessment taking into account social, landscape, ecological and historical considerations among others.

"My department has and will continue to engage with a wide-ranging number of statutory consultees and public bodies, including the Northern Ireland Environmental Agency Historical Monuments Unit."

Critics have noted Sinn Féin's championing of Heaney's legacy and its value. Last January MLA Ian Milne said the HomePlace would "help boost tourism in the area as people come from around the world to learn more about Seamus Heaney and his poetry".

While visiting the area in 2014, Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness tweeted a passage of Heaney's Anahorish. It quickly prompted a backlash with one response saying: "But not felt so deep as to consider what impact bulldozing Heaney's dreams will do to the area."

An online petition has already been started to build public support for an alternative location, a number of which had already been considered.