“Welcome to Muckamore, loyalist heartland – lead the way.” “In defence of our heritage and culture.”
In the Muckamore/Ballycraigy areas of Antrim the insignia of the LVF are still in place. “Lead the way” was the slogan of the LVF (see e.g. D01246 for a prominent instance in Ballycraigy). The organisation called a ceasefire and decommissioned some weapons in the years after the Agreement but persists in some form in Antrim (WP).
The Sons Of Ulster also used to use the slogan “Lead the way” (asa described in J1947) but it is not present in the board shown in the recent (2022) Old Ulster’s Battle Cry.
The two boards below are on gables above Woodgreen, which is the site of the bonfire (ig) featured in the second image. They used to claim that it was the biggest bonfire (see C06695) but Craigyhill (in Larne) is more recently the tallest – see Commonwealth Handling Equipment.
There is also a memorial garden to Billy Wright in Ballycraigy – see M05203.
Here is a second set of images showing the “peace or protocol” poster that has appeared in PUL areas in the city, three in east Belfast – along the Newtownards Road – and two from north Belfast – Oakmount Drive and Ballysillan Road. Two others in norther Belfast were seen previously in A Return To Violence, which also explains the poster.
Gertrude Street no longer exists – it was just east of where Wolff Close now is. But the Gertrude Street Defenders LOL 525 (Fb) brought back a former lodge (Lees Temperance/East Belfast Orange) March 2017, with former members of the Gertrude Star flute band (News Letter). For the five-flowered board on the right, see The Flax And The Lily. This pair of boards is on the courtyard fencing around the Westbourne Glentoran Supporters Club, off the Newtownards Road in the old Solway Street.
The Campsie Club (of Londonderry) is the youngest of the eight parent clubs of the Apprentice Boys “founded 1950” and is the only one named after one of the apprentice boys who shut the gates against the forces of James II in 1688 – Henry Campsie (web).
This Irish Street board puts the “Bro. Scott Goligher Memorial, Londonderry, Loyal Orange Lodge No. 461” (history of the lodge at Grand City Lodge) and the Campsie Club on either side of the “Protestant Boys flute band” (Fb).
Three months after it was initially whitewashed (mid June, 2022), the repaint of so-called “Freedom Corner” is now complete, with a new mural on each of the 11 panels that make it up. Today’s post is a gallery of fifteen images from the new wall. The main gables reproduce photographs of the UDA (and more specifically the East Belfast brigade) during the 1970s. The side walls celebrate the formation of the UDA/LPA/UFF/UYM in 1971-1974 and the role of women in supporting prisoners.
The emblem at the centre of this latest version of the 36th (Ulster) Division mural in Glynn seems to be a novel creation, putting together a crown sitting on a blue ribbon draped over a shield showing a (right-handed) red hand, with a garland of shamrock, thistle, and rose.
This is the fifth mural (at least) on this wall since 2008. The only images we have of the previous one shows it in a vandalised state (see the images from 2020 below); for earlier, see 2015, 2011 (Street View), and 2008.
The plaque on the stone to the right reads, “When you go home, tell them of us and say for their tomorrow we gave our today”
The new mural has the following to its left: “This mural was erected by the Friends of the Somme Co. Antrim in remembrance of the volunteers of the 36th (Ulster) Division who bravely fought for our freedom. ‘At the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them.”
“Loyalist Sunnylands & Woodburn celebrates 100th anniversary Northern Ireland”, and the silver jubilee/25th anniversary of the Ulster Grenadiers flute band (Fb), 1996-2021, and salute Captain Sir Tom Moore, hero fundraiser during the Covid lockdown. The Maintain The Union wall in Woodburn was featured previously; added here are close-ups from the fence and also the same boards in Sunnylands.
Lambeg drums can be as loud as 120 decibels – as loud as small aircraft. The skin is goat and the wood is typically oak, the middle part – or “shell” can be painted, with biblical, Orange, or loyal iconography: in the three close-ups presented here we see HMS Thrasher (which was docked for a time in Larne (Fb)), King Billy and the cock of the north, “the late Sir H[enry] Wilson” a high-ranking British Army soldier who was a supporter of the Ulster Volunteers and proponent of the Curragh “mutiny” (WP). The drums were played as part of the Eleventh celebrations in Glynn.
Here are 20 clips from the BBC programme Come Listen To Me Boys.
The orange lily and the (pale blue) flax flower take their place around the Ulster Banner alongside the English rose and Scottish thistle, and the Irish shamrock is retained even in the presence of the lily. The flax is perhaps included because we are in the Factory area of Larne, near the site of a (former) linen mill. The Welsh daffodil is excluded. The detail above is part of a wider board “Boyne Square celebrates 100 years of Northern Ireland”; the flanking emblems of the Boyne Defenders (LOL 1297), Rangers Supporters club (Larne Branch) – which also uses the shamrock – Boyne Square Bonfire Forum, and Larne & District Great War Society and included below; the emblems of three flute bands can be seen in Norman Anderson and The Gunrunners.
“We are united by the Act Of Union, we won’t be divided by an act of betrayal.” The ‘act of betrayal’ in question is the Northern Ireland Protocol of Brexit which puts NI outside the single market but allows for the free movement of goods with the EU but not Britain – hence the “Irish Sea border”.
Extramural Activity 