BELFAST'S historic black street signs should be protected and potentially reintroduced, the SDLP has said.
Councillor Gary McKeown last night said the street signs "are an instantly recognisable part of our built heritage, bringing real character to the city".
He said the party is to bring a motion to Belfast City Council as they have "real concern about the absence of any proper protections to ensure their upkeep, which could put at direct threat this significant part of Belfast’s history and sense of identity".
"We are calling for council to undertake a review of this issue and come up with plans to ensure the timely repair and upkeep of historic street signs, the creation of a register of all historic street signs in Belfast, and even potentially reinstate signs which would have originally been traditional black signs but have subsequently been replaced with generic street signs," he said.
"We also want to look at whether the old tile signs should be listed to provide them with legal protection.
"Over the years, the historic look and feel of our city has slowly but surely been decimated, and with it old street signs have gone too.
"However, many still exist from the Victorian and Edwardian eras, so we owe it to future generations to protect what we have rather than letting them disappear from want of effort to preserve and maintain them."
