From yesterday’s Ordinary People, Extraordinary Roles, here are the three individual plaques to Trevor King, Frenchie Marchant, and Davy Hamilton, three UVF volunteers killed at or near the junction of Spier’s Place and the Shankill Road. The poetic verse (in the wide shot) is from Siegfried Sassoon’s Suicide In The Trenches.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2018 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X04920 X04921 X04922 X04918
“This plaque is dedicated to the memory of Lieutenant Colonel Trevor King, died 9th July 1994, Major William (Frenchie) Marchant, died 28th April 1987, Volunteer David Hamilton, Died 17th June 1994. These brave men died near this spot [the corner of Spier’s Place and Shankill Road, west Belfast] by the enemies of Ulster. No sacrifice is too great for one’s country. They paid the ultimate sacrifice. ‘They shall grow not old/as we that are left grow old/Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn/At the going down of the sun and in the morning/We will remember them.’” King and Hamilton (along with Colin Craig, an RUC informer and not included on the plaque) were shot by the INLA and died of their wounds three weeks and one day later. Frenchie Marchant (in the middle of the image above) was shot by the IRA outside The Eagle chip shop.
For the individual plaques, see A Fisherman, An Entertainer, A Shankill Road Man.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2018 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X04919 X04923
From Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, 1953: “The strangest victory in all history: Heremon [Érimón] O’Neill racing a rival chieftain for possession of Ireland became the first man to touch its soil by cutting off his own hand and hurling it ashore! His sacrifice made Heremon the first king of Ulster, 1015 B.C. The red hand of Ulster is still the provinces coat of arms thousands of years later.” Most people believe it not.
Newtownards Road, east Belfast
From left to right: For Freedom Alone | As Long As 100 Of Us Remain Alive | Loyalist East Belfast | The Strangest Victory In All History | Ulster’s Past Defenders | Nationality is included in Loyalist East Belfast | Ulster’s Present Defenders | Freedom Corner
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2018 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X04874
Here are five more images of the WWI memorial mural (featured yesterday) in Drumahoe Gardens, Larne, including a plaque to Walter Brownlee and his brothers Edward and Harry, all of whom survived the war.
“There are lonely homes in Ulster/Some “light of life” has shed/There are many names of loved ones/Among the list of dead.//They fell for God and honour;/Why are ye lonely when/They answered soon as they were asked/And fought and died like men!”
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2018 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X04902 X04900 X04899 X04903 X04901
History Hub Ulster and Larne Urban District Council are conducting a search for additional names of residents from the Larne area who died in WWI, to add to the 147 included on the war memorial in Inver. The dead are also remembered in this wrap-around mural in Milbrook. We will have close-ups of the different panels and plaques tomorrow. For images of the launch, see the Friends of the 36th – Cairncastle facebook page.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2018 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X04898 drumahoe gdns
Glentoran FC’s emblem features a cock (similar to the rooster on Le Coq Sportif, which made the team’s strip from 1996-1999) and its slogan is “le jeu avant tout” (“the game before/above all). The sources of the French influence is unknown. In the mural above, from outside the Oval, he gives “East Belfast” the boot.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2018 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X04895 X04896
Here are two versions of CS Lewis’s character of Aslan, from The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe and the rest of the Chronicles Of Narnia,one by Glen Molloy in Bawnmore (alongside The Night King from Game Of Thrones) and the other by Alan Burke in Townsley Street (near Metal Work).
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2018 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X04844 X04864
This mural forms a pair with Ulster’s Past Defenders in the middle of Newtownards Road’s ‘Freedom Corner’. The present defenders are the UDA/UFF; the past defenders were the UDR, and before them, the B Specials, (and before them, Cuchulainn – 2005 and 1992). Both pieces were repainted in 2016 after the previous murals disintegrated (see Freedom Corner for possible causes).
“The UDA was formed in 1971 as an umbrella for loyalist vigilante groups being formed. There role to defend protestant community from IRA violence. They remain today. The UFF was formed in 1973 as military group for the UDA to defend protestants from acts of Irish Republican violence over 30 yrs of conflict.”
From left to right: For Freedom Alone | As Long As 100 Of Us Remain Alive | Loyalist East Belfast | The Strangest Victory In All History | Ulster’s Past Defenders | Nationality is included in Loyalist East Belfast | Ulster’s Present Defenders | Freedom Corner
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2018 Extramural Activity
X03360 X04877
Giant lettering by RACE (RASER) and AKEN from TMN crew (The Most Nasty) above the writing on the Cupar Way “peace” line.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2018 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X04784
This mural (perhaps still in progress) is in the Connswater Women’s Group (“CWG” in the mural) spot on Severn Road, showing the sun rising over the Harland & Wolff cranes in east Belfast. For the previous mural, see The Verticality Of The Divine.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2018 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X04882 X04881
Extramural Activity 