Police are investigating a fire at the former Crumlin Road courthouse in north Belfast as a suspected arson attack. Emergency services responded to the vacant building at approximately 20:40 BST on Monday, with the Crumlin Road closed in both directions between Agnes Street and Carlisle Circus during the incident.
The Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service deployed five appliances and an aerial appliance to tackle the blaze. No injuries were reported at the scene.
The courthouse, designed by renowned architect Sir Charles Lanyon during the 1840s, stands as one of Northern Ireland's most architecturally significant structures. The building operated for nearly 150 years before its closure in 1998, though it had sustained damage from fires on previous occasions prior to this latest incident.
This fire at the historic building follows a pattern of deliberate fires at derelict properties across Northern Ireland. In June 2026, police investigated an arson attack on a former college building in Londonderry, where firefighters spent three hours extinguishing the flames. Similarly, residents were evacuated from homes in Londonderry in September 2026 following a deliberate fire at a derelict gym, with nearby households forced to leave as a precautionary measure. In County Tyrone, a man was charged with arson in connection with a fire in Coalisland in August 2026, with two other men held in relation to a separate deliberately started fire in Cookstown the same evening. Most recently, police treated an early-morning fire at a Bangor house as deliberate arson with intent to endanger life in September 2026, leaving the property extensively damaged though unoccupied at the time.
