Beat Carnival Belfast (ig | web) puts on celebrations all over town and teaches skills from its base in Millfield/Brown’s Square. Artists Danni Simpson (ig), Codo (ig), Ana Fish (ig), and FGB (ig) worked together to spray this piece on the Gardiner Street door.
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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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“Another winter day/has come and gone away/In either Paris and [or] Rome/And I wanna go home” – words from the Michael Bublé-penned song ‘Home’ which boy-band Westlife released on its 2007 album, Back Home. For Egan, Feehily, and Filan, home is, or was, Sligo — the three went to Summerhill secondary school and were together in earlier bands; Byrne (and Bryan/Brian McFadden who was a member of the group from 1998 to 2004 but is not included in the mural) is from Dublin (WP).
“With a career spanning twenty years, Westlife are, Shane Filan, Nicky Byrne, Kian Egan and Mark Feehily. A true pop phenomenon with more number 1 hits than any other act apart from The Beatles and Elvis, Westlife have sold 50 million albums worldwide.”
The mural is behind Gilooly Hall, on Temple Street, Sligo. It was painted in 2015 by Kelan Curran (TAPA).
Previously from Sligo: Maud Gonne.
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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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These are the two sides of the electrical box next to emic’s large wildflowers mural, presumably also by emic (ig). Above is the kingfisher on the Collingwood side and below are the flowers the embankment side. The kingfisher or cruıdín is common throughout Ireland (BirdwatchIreland), including Belfast. Here are two videos of kingfishers on the Lagan: Tom McClean | Tony Dalton.
Here is a Visual History page of electrical boxes in Belfast.
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Going by the streets and places mentioned in these plaques – see the list below – “old Ardoyne” would not have included Balholm Drive, where this gable wall is; Brompton Park and the streets above it – built c. 1935 are renamed c. 1939 (after a 1937 rent strike) – were known as Glenard. (See also Belfast Forum one | two.)
According to an entry on Belfast Forum, Skinny Lizzy’s real name was Elizabeth Gilmore. According to another, Greast Nellie’s chip shop and the Crumlin Star was opposite one another.
These memories from emigrants to Austalia mention Davidson’s shop and Andy’s shop, Skinny Lizzy, The League, Toby’s Hall, and Beltex Mill.
left side: Crumlin Star, Peter Toal’s hard wear shop, Beltax [Beltex] mill, Cassidy’s shop, Holy Cross Boys school
top row: Chatham Street Skinny Lizzy shop, Elmfield Street Reid’s shop, Brookfield Street McCafferty shop, Flax Street Greasy Nelly’s, Granny Byer’s shop
second: Oakfield Street, Kerrera Street Skillen’s shop, Hocker Street Rock’s shop, Butler Street Tom’s shop, Top Of The Pad, Dan The Man’s Rockiet[?]
third: The Millie Dam, Crumlin Street Billy O’Hara’s, Herbert Street Davidson’s shop, Fairfield Street Black’s shop, Paddy’s barber shop, McNab’s Chippy, Raynardo’s chippy
fourth: The GAA Tin Hut, The Gap Andy’s shop, Hole In The Knickers, The Unity Club
fifth: Rose Bank mill, Flax Street mill, Toby’s Hall, The Hibbs [Hibs] Club [in Herbert St], Bloody Mary’s Arch
sixth: Brookfield mill, The League AWMC [Ardoyne Working Men’s Club (Fb)], Roy Kane’s shop
Balholm Drive, Ardoyne, north Belfast
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Des Wilson and Noelle Ryan served the Springhill community for over forty years (see Inspire, Uphold, And Make Happy). Noelle died in 2014 (An Phoblacht) and Des in November 2019. They are remembered by this stained glass window in Conway Mill (by Mill resident Alice McGuinness (Fb)): “In memory of Father Des Wilson 1925-2019”, “Dedicated to Noelle Ryan 1932-2014”
“The Way I See It” is the title of Father Des Wilson’s autobiography (and the title of NVTv’s documentary about Des).
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Here is Carrickfergus castle by Dan Kitcherner (ig), painted on a wall in the town centre that had a piece of “RIP GFA protocol” graffiti on it (Street View). The mural is based on the actual scene, though the shopfront marked “castle” is actually Mayur Indian restaurant.
Funded by the International Fund for Ireland’s Peace Impact Programme (BelTel).
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Extramural Activity 