Coleraine Chronicle

About Coleraine Chronicle

Overview

The Coleraine Chronicle is a weekly newspaper published in Coleraine, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, and one of the oldest continuously published titles in the North. Founded in 1844, it celebrated its 175th anniversary in April 2019 and is owned by Alpha Media Group Ltd, part of the Alpha Newspaper Group based at Moygashel near Dungannon. The paper serves the Causeway Coast and Glens area, covering the main towns of Coleraine, Ballycastle, Ballymoney, Limavady, Portrush, Portstewart and Bushmills, and it is published from headquarters at 2 Lodge Road, Coleraine. The group's materials describe the Chronicle as the Causeway Coast's leading local newspaper, selling more than twice as many copies as its combined local competition and ranking as the second-largest weekly newspaper in Northern Ireland. Its website is colerainechronicle.co.uk, and digital editions are available through the Alpha group's newsstand.

Founded in 1844

The Coleraine Chronicle was founded in 1844, the same year as its Ballymoney sister paper, in the decade when the provincial press of Ulster was taking its modern shape. Coleraine in the 1840s was a thriving market and port town on the River Bann, and the Chronicle was established to give the town and its district a newspaper of their own — one that would report the markets, the courts, the council business and the community life of the lower Bann valley with an attention no Belfast paper could spare. More than 180 years later it is still publishing, a record matched by few titles anywhere in these islands. The paper's archive, with issues held in digital collections from 1844 to 1922 and in libraries beyond, is a uniquely detailed record of the North Coast's history: the Famine, the Land War, the rise and fall of the linen and shirt industries, the Troubles and the peace, the transformation of a market town into the self-styled capital of the Causeway Coast.

The 175th anniversary

In April 2019 the Coleraine Chronicle marked 175 years of continuous publication, a milestone celebrated by the paper itself on 17 April 2019 and noted across the Northern Ireland media. Few provincial newspapers reach such an anniversary: it means the Chronicle has published through the reigns of six British monarchs, through two world wars, through partition and the Troubles, and through the digital revolution that has closed hundreds of its contemporaries. The anniversary was an occasion for the paper to look back on its own history — the editors and proprietors, the great stories, the changing face of the town it serves — and for its readers to reflect on the paper's place in their lives. For many families on the North Coast, the Chronicle has been a weekly presence for generations: the paper in which grandparents' weddings were announced, in which parents' sporting triumphs were recorded, and in which today's readers find their own children's achievements.

Incorporating the Ballymoney Free Press

In 1934 the Coleraine Chronicle incorporated the Ballymoney Free Press, the Ballymoney newspaper that had been published from 1863. The Free Press, edited in its early years by Samuel C. McElroy — an auctioneer and a key member of the Route Tenants' Defence Association — had been closely associated with the tenant-right movement of the nineteenth century, and its incorporation into the Chronicle on 1 November 1934 brought nearly three-quarters of a century of Ballymoney journalism into the Coleraine title. The amalgamation was typical of the consolidation of the provincial press in the inter-war years, as smaller titles were absorbed by their stronger neighbours. The Chronicle's masthead history thus carries the memory of two towns' journalism, and the paper's coverage of Ballymoney to this day reflects a relationship that was formalised more than ninety years ago.

Alpha Media Group ownership

The Coleraine Chronicle is owned by Alpha Media Group Ltd, part of the Alpha Newspaper Group headquartered at Moygashel near Dungannon, County Tyrone. Alpha is primarily involved in local newspaper publishing and radio broadcasting in Northern Ireland, and its titles form the largest local newspaper group in the North by circulation. The group was built up from the late 1980s onwards under the leadership of the businessman and former Ulster Unionist politician John Taylor, Baron Kilclooney, who acquired long-established local titles across the North — including the Coleraine Chronicle, the Ballymoney Chronicle, the Tyrone Courier, the Ulster Gazette and the Ballymena and Antrim Guardians — and united them under single ownership. In 2026 the group's 13 newspapers and websites became the subject of a takeover by Iconic Media Group, the publisher formerly known as National World, a deal cleared by Ireland's Competition and Consumer Protection Commission despite opposition from the National Union of Journalists.

The North Coast's leading paper

The Chronicle is marketed as the Causeway Coast's leading local newspaper, and the claims made for it are striking: that it sells more than twice as many copies as all of its combined local competition, that no other local newspaper comes close to it in quality of content and extensiveness of coverage, and that it is the second-largest weekly newspaper in Northern Ireland. Its circulation area takes in the main towns of the coast — Coleraine, Ballycastle, Ballymoney, Limavady, Portrush, Portstewart and Bushmills — and the local government districts of the former Coleraine, Moyle, Ballymoney and Limavady boroughs, now united in the Causeway Coast and Glens district. Coleraine itself is presented as the "Capital of the Causeway Coast": the borough has a resident population of 57,000, and as the regional centre for the north-east the town serves a catchment population of more than 200,000. In such a market, the Chronicle's sales leadership is both a commercial achievement and a vote of confidence from its readers.

The Lodge Road headquarters

The Chronicle is published from 2 Lodge Road, Coleraine, BT52 1NB, an address that has been synonymous with the paper for generations. The building — the iconic redbrick home of the Chronicle — was for more than a century and a half the place where the paper was written, set and printed, and where the presses thundered on production nights. In 2025 the building began a new chapter: after a meticulous three-year restoration, the former newspaper offices were transformed into The Chronicle Press Business Hub, a centre for innovation, collaboration and community offering 30 private offices and six meeting rooms. At its centre stands The Print Room Auditorium, an elegantly restored space on the spot where the Chronicle's original presses once stood, now used for workshops, presentations and networking events. The transformation was presented as a case of legacy meeting next-generation enterprise: from 1844 the Chronicle had been the heartbeat of the North Coast, championing local stories and supporting small businesses, and the hub carries that spirit forward in a new form.

Editorial coverage

The Coleraine Chronicle's editorial content is the comprehensive local journalism of a market-leading weekly: local news, politics, sport and community events, reported for readers in Coleraine and the surrounding districts. News pages cover the Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council, planning and development — in a district where tourism development is a constant issue — court proceedings, policing, health and education. Politics gets full treatment, reflecting the district's significance in Northern Ireland's public life. Sport follows the town's teams and the district's sporting passions: football, rugby, Gaelic games, golf on the great links courses, angling on the Bann, and motorcycle road racing — the North West 200, run on the Triangle circuit between Portrush, Portstewart and Coleraine, is one of the world's great road races and the Chronicle's coverage of it is an annual highlight. Community pages carry the schools, churches, charities and clubs that make the paper the district's family album.

The newspaper archive

The Chronicle's long history is preserved in one of the richest newspaper archives in Ireland. Digital collections hold the paper's issues from 1844 to 1922, making the Victorian and Edwardian Chronicle searchable page by page — the advertisements, the market reports, the court cases, the letters to the editor, the births, marriages and deaths of 180 years ago. For family historians, the archive is a treasure: the Chronicle recorded the everyday lives of the North Coast's people in a detail that no other source matches. For historians of the district, it is the primary source for the Famine years, the Land War, the rise of the resort towns, the coming of the railway and the great events of the twentieth century as they were experienced on the North Coast. The survival of so complete a run is itself a tribute to the paper's institutional continuity: few titles have kept their records so carefully for so long.

Coleraine the town

The town the Chronicle serves has been transformed in the paper's lifetime. Coleraine stands on the River Bann near its mouth, a market town that became the administrative and commercial centre of the North Coast. It is home to the Coleraine campus of Ulster University, with thousands of students, and to the regional hospital, the civic offices and the retail centres that serve the wider district. The town's hinterland includes the great attractions of the Causeway Coast: the Giant's Causeway, the beaches of Portrush and Portstewart, the Royal Portrush golf links — host to the Open Championship — Dunluce Castle and the Bushmills distillery. Commercial investment in Coleraine ran to well over £90 million in the years around the millennium, bringing the Diamond shopping centre, the new hospital, the civic centre and the bus and rail interchange. Through all of it, the Chronicle has been there, recording the planning applications, the openings, the controversies and the celebrations — the town's memory, week by week.

The digital edition

The Coleraine Chronicle publishes online at colerainechronicle.co.uk, where the week's news appears alongside e-paper editions of the print title, available through the Alpha group's digital newsstand at the thechronicle.uk.com family of sites. The website carries breaking news between the weekly editions, photographic galleries from the district's events, and the sport, community and business coverage that are the paper's staples. For the North Coast diaspora — the many thousands with roots in Coleraine, Ballymoney, Ballycastle and Limavady who now live elsewhere — the digital edition is the thread that keeps them connected to home. The e-paper reproduces the print edition page by page for readers who want the full weekly experience on screen. In print and online, the Chronicle remains what it has been since 1844: the Causeway Coast's own newspaper, telling the district's story to the district itself.