“With voice, pen or hand we will defend our land.” David (Davy) Patterson (12-10-1955 – 03-01-2019) was a member of the 1st East Belfast Rangers Supporters Club (Fb) and Albertbridge Glentoran Supporters Club (Funeral Times).
This memorial board is the side-wall to the Somme Society mural (see Their Name Liveth Forevermore) and the Red Hand Commando memorial garden in Hunt Street, east Belfast.
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Copyright © 2025 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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This UVF poster urges residents of east Belfast who owe money to loan sharks not to sell drugs or find some other way to pay it back, but instead to get in touch with a political representative.
The Sunday World reported that repayments are being withheld after the Shankill UVF ordered the leadership in East Belfast UVF to stand down (in November 2023 – IRN | BBC) and took over the operation. The posters thus come from the old (East Belfast) guard, trying to thwart the new bosses and hoping to resume collection themselves.
SDLP councillor Séamus De Faoıte commented (in the Irish News), “Anyone who has knowledge of criminal activity or exploitation of vulnerable people should report it to the relevant authorities, but people do not need to take any lessons from the UVF when it comes to upholding the law.” (Also: BelTel)
Meanwhile, the endingtheharm.com campaign (part of the Executive/DOJ’s programme designed to tackle “paramilitary activity and organised crime”) continues. See They Control You for a 2019 version. For the mural on the right of the final image, see Herbie McCallum.
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Copyright © 2024 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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This piece is on the same office-building as the ‘Be Your Best’ piece featured previously (in Auld Cobblers) at the city-side entrance to east Belfast, at the junction of Middlepath Street and Newtownards Road. Both are by Dee Craig/Belfast Mural Arts (Fb) as part of East Belfast Enterprise’s (web | ig) ‘Connecting Communities Through Art’ initiative. The two works were officially launched together on April 20th (pics on EBE’s Instagram). The two in-progress shots (last below) are from April 16th.
According to this Community NI article, the work has been installed using “a jigsaw-like technique using super strength glue to give it a lifespan of up to 25 years before requiring maintenance”.
Interpretations of the new piece are encouraged; feel free to comment or e-mail.
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The inspiration for this new piece of street art by KMG (ig) was the Strand Spinning Mill (formerly the Jaffe Spinning Mill) which closed in 1983 and is now the Portview Trade Centre. During WWI the mill made munitions and during WWII viscose rayon. The film Lint And Linen (youtube) covers both pre-industrial and mechanical linen-production (though mostly focused on yarn from line fibres rather than from tow, which was the Strand mill’s claim to fame (Duffy Rafferty)); the painting appears to present a more primitive and imaginary age in which fibres could be spun using the human hand.
For photographs of the old mill on the Trade Centre, see previously the image of A Block in Strand Spinning Mill.
“Spinning memories” is the name of a planned collection of stories for an archive at Portview (Portview Stories).
Townsley Street, east Belfast, next to the Narnia sculptures and facing Aslan Is On The Move.
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This painted box by Karl Fenz (web) is on Middlepath Street past the M3 and within sight of the Teenage Dreams.
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“Aged 18, and against her parents’ wishes, Emily Gibson married Pasquali Desano, on 11 January, 1932. A taste of Italy: Pasquali was an Italian immigrant, a widower, and 25 years older than Emily. They lived at 147 Newtownards Road and ran an ice cream shop next door at No 145. A door hidden behind a bookcase connected the two properties. Pasquali, born in Cassino, Italy in 1887, came to Belfast around 1904-5. He became part of a small but substantial community of Italians already living here. Italian ice cream was a well-established tradition in Belfast since the start of the 20th century. Ice cream shops, owned by descendants of Italians such as Desano, Fusco, Morelli and Rossi, still exist over 100 years since first appearing on the streets of Belfast. You might even come across one on this trail. In 1940, once Italy declared war on Britain, Italians living here were sent to internment camps. It is believed that Pasquali obtained naturalisation and was able to remain. Living so close to the shipyard and docks, the family could not escape the Belfast Blitz (7th April – 6th May 1941). Wesbourne Presbyterian Church was badly hit and, like many of their neighbours, they evacuated to the Saintfield area. Pasquali died on 9th November 1951, aged 64. Emily died on 15 DEcember 2018 aged 105. She lived through two world wars, saw women gain equal voting rights, the partition of Ireland, the ‘Troubles’, and Belfast’s regeneration. Her secret to a long life? ‘Don’t drink, don’t smoke, eat salmon and soy sauce!’ Though I’m sure the Italian ice cream also played a part.”
The info sign is on the railings of Westbourne Presbyterian; the graphic is on a courtyard wall.
Other entries in the Eastside Lives Heritage Trail include Miss McMinn’s Girls’ Club | The Godfather Of Legal Betting | No Ordinary Woman | Two Smart Alecs. For a list of all fourteen, see the Trail’s pamphlet (pdf).
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“Alexander Green McMullan came from Tobermore to Belfast in the 1900s and was employed as a horse drawn delivery driver to local grocers. Two ‘Smart Alecs’: Thomas Mitchel, a grocer at My Lady’s Road, helped Alex set up his own grocery business by providing initial stock. By 1913, ‘Alec’s’ was open for business at 54 Imperial Street. He married Naomi (Nomi) Love who also had a good eye for business. She asked Alex to make a pulley line from the ceiling. This line displayed clothing which she sold ‘on tick’. The shop thrived. When a ‘Twelfth’ bonfire shattered the shop’s gable window, Alex seized the opportunity to increase selling space – he bricked up the gable wall, creating shelving for stock. The shop was very much a family concern. Their children, Alexander Green McMullan junior, and Isabel, worked in the shop, making pounds and pounds of butter, straight from the slab, which they wrapped in greaseproof paper. During the Second World War, loaves of bread, smuggled from the Free State, added to the family income as these were sold on to the grateful customers. Alex junior inherited his parents’ eye for a business opportunity. Using his engineering expertise and his Morris Oxford car, the entrepreneur delivered and collected washing machines daily to housewives. Daily rental was half a crown (12.5 pence). By the mid-1960s, Alex junior had sold his parents’ business but it remained in the common memory as ‘Alec’s Grocers Shop’.
Imperial Street, east Belfast
Other entries in the Eastside Lives Heritage Trail include Miss McMinn’s Girls’ Club | The Godfather Of Legal Betting | No Ordinary Woman | Desano’s. For a list of all fourteen, see the Trail’s pamphlet (pdf).
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This new three-storey mural by Dee Craig (Fb) is at the city end of Newtownards Road and so serves as a highly-visible introduction to east Belfast. People arriving in the area are now greeted with a vintage image of a smiling bearded man in a cloth cap, surrounded by occupations from the industrial era: “Cobbler, rag’n’bone man, fish monger, welder, builder, sweep, carpenter, window cleaner, butcher”, capped off by an inspirational “Be your best”, with yellow highlights that match the colour of the shipyard cranes Samson and Goliath (see the third image).
In being overshadowed by the mural, the “Let’s Twist Again” sculpture on the plaza in front of the business centre now becomes a symbol of east Belfast rather than the symbol. It too features east Belfast’s “industrial past” (BelTel), using rope as a metaphor for community: “By being bound together in a common cause, the natural tendency for each twist, fibre, yarn, and strand to separate, only serves to make the rope stronger.”
On the wall behind the sculpture and below the mural is one of the Eastside Lives Heritage Trail (pdf) figures, Jane Scott, whose fifteen-year-old son Samuel fell to his death from a ladder while working on the ship in 1910. She supposedly cursed the ship and it sank two years later.
For a straight-on shot, see the post at the Paddy Duffy collection.
Images of the completed piece are from March 27th and 29th. The in-progress image below is from March 18th.
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“I stand with Israel.” These two stickers expressing support for Israel are in (PUL) Cluan Place, in east Belfast.
See also: Ulster & Israel | אי כניעה
For Ian Ogle, see Justice For Ian Ogle.
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“No illegal immigration – protect our children.” The January Fact Sheet from gov.uk on 2023’s measures against illegal migration includes a “Small Boats Operational Command” with a staff of 500 people to tackle “illegal migration by small boats”. Summary statistics for small-boat arrivals can be found on WP. Stopping the boats was one of the government’s “five key priorities” in March, 2023 (Reuters) and included in the Bill approved in July (gov.uk). The plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda was declared illegal by the Supreme Court in November (Reuters).
This small sticker on the Mersey Street street-sign is in east Belfast. The source of the need to “protect children” is unknown; the attacker outside Gaelscoıl Choláıste Mhuıre in Dublin in November was originally from Algeria (it is not known how he arrived) and a naturalised Irish citizen since 2014 (WP).
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Extramural Activity 