Month: Apr 2015

Facelift

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2015-04-16 SandsFull+

The Bobby Sands mural in Sevastopol Street has been given a facelift, including the blocking-up of a vent on Sands’s left cheek. Kieran Doherty and Joe McDonnell have been added in place of the 1798 medallions on each side. On the side-wall are Sean McCaughey, ten doves representing the 1981 hunger-strikers, and Long Kesh. Aerosol‘s accordion-player stencil has been also been retained.

For a full history of the wall, see the Bobby Sands (Sevastopol Street) Visual History page.

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Ag sráıd Sevastopol cuımhnıtear ar Bobby Sands ı múrmhaısıú a aithnıtear ar fud an domhaın. Ba scrıbhneoır, file, réabhlóıdí agus díograıseoır Gaeılge é Sands. Fuaır sé bas 5 Bealtaıne 1981 tar éıs 66 lá ar stailc ocraıs. As ucht na dıograıse a thaıspeáın Sands agus a chomhchımí ı leıth fhoglaım na teanga faoı choınníollacha uafásacha Bhlocanna H na Ceıse Fada, spreagadh glúın úr chun dul ı mbun athghabháıl na Gaeılge.

Here at Sevastopol Street Bobby Sands is remembered in a mural which has become world-renowned. Sands, a writer, poet, revolutionary and Gaelic enthusiast, died on May 5th 1981 after 66 days on hunger strike. Sands and his fellow prisoners inspired a new generation to reclaim the Irish language enthusing them by the huge efforts they put into learning Irish in the horrendous conditions on the H Blocks of Long Kesh.

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Isolation

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2015-03-22 IRPWAStencil4+

The mural of Padraig Pearse’s famous quote (“The fools, the fools …”) at the east end of Brompton Park has been replaced by the stencils above and below from the Irish Republican Prisoners Welfare Association (irpwa.com): “Oppose the isolation of Republican prisoners!” and “Stop strip searches!”. The final image is an older but similar stencil from the top of the Whiterock Road.

See also: Scairt Amach | IRPWA | various Maghaberry murals.

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Surviving The Titanic

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2014-05-06 South5Titanic+

Here are two final images from the south side of the Donegall Road bridge over the Victoria Street line, one about Titanic and the other about locals awarded the MBE.

“I was in Lifeboat 13. I always remember that. My father was waving to us and talking to a clergyman, the Rev. Carter. The Titanic went in the ice and I heard three bangs. Before we hit, there had been terrific vibrations from the engines during the night as the ship was really racing over the sea. As the lifeboat pulled away we heard cries from the people left on the Titanic and in the water and explosions in the ship. There were lots of bodies floating … We were in the lifeboat nine hours. I kept looking in the water for my father and when we reached New York we went to the hospitals to see if he had been picked up.” Mrs. Charlotte Collier

How many people survived the Titanic is one of the most frequently asked questions regarding the history of this legendary ship. Of the 2,228 passengers and crew members who set sail, only 705 survived the Titanic.

See previously: Titanic Lifeboat | The Titanic Story and various other Titanic murals

1. Belfast Blitz #2
2 & 10. The Thread Of History (weavers)
3 & 9. Work Organises Life
4. In The Wars (Korea)
5  & 8. Surviving The Titanic
6. The Door Opens And Lets The Future In (Carnegie Library)
7. The Beautiful Blues (Linfield football)

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2014-05-06 South+

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X01850 X01853 X01844 disaster great loss of life buckingham palace “Being a man or a women is a matter of birth. Being a man or women who makes a different is a matter of choice.” Tommy Wilson, MBE – for service to the community; Rita Mills MBE – for service to the civil service

Standing Stone

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2015-03-14 TeleBlitz+

“The scars on this stone were caused in the German air raids of the second world war. Despite severe damage to the building, the Belfast Telegraph was published without interruption.” The masonry above forms part of what was the old front door of the offices, at the corner of Royal Avenue and Library Street.

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The Right To Be Happy

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2014-12-11 NewLodge1900+

The life of a child in the New Lodge of the 1900s was one of poverty, disease, mill work, and being displaced by German bombers in 1941, with only a lamppost swing and marbles for relief. (It was also in black-and-white.) The struggle for young people’s rights “to be loved, to family life, to freedom of expression, to life, to your own beliefs, not to be bullied, to be safe from war, to privacy, to play, to be happy” continues in the panels on the right-hand side (for a close-up, see Young People’s Rights).

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First Movement

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2014-08-08 MarketsFiacc+

Patrick O’Connor was born on this day in 1924 on the lower Falls but after his father emigrated he spent his early years – until age 5 – with his grandparents in East Street in the Markets. It was as a high-schooler in New York that he adopted the name Pádraıc Fıacc (“fıach dubh” is “raven”) and began writing poetry. He settled in Glengormley upon his second and final return; it is not clear that he ever saw East Street lined with British Army soldiers, as shown in the mural above. He wrote of his early life in ‘First Movement’:

Low clouds, yellow in a mist wind
Sift on far-off Ards
Drift hazily …
I was born on such a morning
Smelling of the bone yards
The smoking chimneys over the slate top roofs
The wayward storm birds
And to the east where morning is, the sea
And to the west where evening is, the sea
Threatening with danger
And it would always darken suddenly

Some of Fıacc’s poems are in the TroublesArchive. There are two videos below. The first is an interview with NVTv’s Bernard Conlon; the second is of a reception in Belfast City Hall.

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Hillock Of The Grey Calf

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2015-03-19 TullygarleyLeft2+

The Tullygarley mural in Larne, originally painted by Caroline Jeffrey, has been replaced with a computer-generated version reproducing most of the images. The bleaching green is gone; the Black Arch has been added, as has part of the mural that was on this site three generations of murals ago: God Save The Queen.

From the info-board for the previous version, included below:

“Tullygarley” means “Hillock of the Grey Calf” – thus the grey calf grazing with the cows.

The 36th Ulster Division – In September 1914 the Ulster Division was formed from the Ulster Volunteer Force which raised thirteen battalions for the three Irish regiments in Ulster.

Bleaching Green – Linen laid out in fields to bleach. The Bleaching Factory interior depicts the Bleaching process. (The building is currently derelict.) Blue Flax Flowers are the national floral emblem of Northern Ireland.

Local Primary School, Inver and Larne, known locally as “the Bridge”, as it looked in the 1930’s with the Inver River running through it. The bridge that the school was named after no longer exists.

Linen Factory of Glyn [Glynn] Road (no longer exists, site of abandoned garage) with inset depicting workers with weaving machines (circa 1924).

The old Tullygarley playground (mural site) with the Fountain in the foreground, and rows of houses on either side (Glynn Road and South Circular Road).

Sun Laundry Van. Sun Laundry showing people working inside (now Rea’s Furnishings, Bank Road).

Larne Lough – it is an area of special interest, a special protection area and a Ramsar site in order to protect the wetland environment.

SS Clyde Valley – launched in July 1886. Was used in 1914 to transport arms from Hamburg to Larne.

Roseate Tern – Larne Lough is the only breeding colony in Northern Ireland for the Roseate Tern, one of the UK’s rarest birds.

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The Hunting Heart

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2015-03-29 StillWatersLeft+

Seamus Heaney was born on this date in 1939 on a farm in County London-/Derry. His first (full) collection was Death Of A Naturalist in 1966 and it included the poem Twice Shy, the concluding lines of which are painted on Stranmillis embankment: Still waters running deep along the embankment walk.

Painted by UUSU students (see also Animals Two By Two).

Belfast City Council report.

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Omphalos

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2015-02-04 CarnhillDefenders+

A “Faugh-a-ballagh” flag (the motto of the Royal Irish Regiment) and two South-East Antrim Defenders (a defunct flute band (Fb)) boards – the one above showing a bulldog marching with a rifle, with “UDA” across his knuckles and the UDA insignia on his lapel – adorn this house in the Castlemara estate in Carrickfergus.

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The Human Condition

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2015-03-14 RightsChildren+

“The way a society treats children reflects not only its qualities of compassion & protective caring but also its sense of justice, its commitment to the future & its urge to enhance the human condition for coming generations.” Words by the United Nations Secretary-General Javier Perez De Cuellar in 1987 inscribed on a mural by Margaret McCann and Andrea Redmond in Dunlewey Street in Clonard.

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X02548 X02549 X02550 rainbow mountains duck flying “1/4 of W. Belfast is under 15. 12 of 16 most deprived wards in Belfast are in W. B.” dolmen races children