Mid Ulster's town shop under one roof
Meadowlane is the kind of place that quietly does a job for a whole region. Set on the Moneymore Road on the edge of Magherafelt, it gathers the shops a market town needs — a big Dunnes for the weekly stock-up, New Look and River Island for the teenagers, Iceland, Boots, Poundland and the phone shops — and puts them all under one covered roof with a car park attached. For families across Mid Ulster, "up to Meadowlane" is shorthand for getting the shopping done in one dry lap.
It runs to somewhere around 145,000 square feet across roughly 39 units, with the small awards that matter to a place like this — a Park Mark for the car park and, by its own account, more than one Loo of the Year nod for the family washrooms — plus a Shopmobility service, a first aid room and Funhub kiddie rides to keep small legs happy while the list gets ticked off.
What it isn't is a destination. There's no cinema, no food court, no big attraction — just the honest business of a town shop done well and kept dry. That's exactly why it earns its place on a days-out map: not as the day itself, but as the warm, practical anchor for one. Pair it with Seamus Heaney's Bellaghy, a walk along the Lough Neagh shore at Ballyronan, or the old rooms of Springhill House, and Meadowlane becomes the easy hour that ties a proper day in Mid Ulster together.