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.
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“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.
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The Irish Republican Prisoners Committee (IRPC) is currently without any web or social-media presence, but it recently mounted this board in Northumberland Street, Belfast. As with all post-Agreement murals for republican prisoners, it uses only barbed wire and not the lark.
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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
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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!”
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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.
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Friz’s (web) ‘Gatekeeper‘ in Joys Entry, painted in 2015 for Culture Night, is suffering from the decay of the boards over the windows.
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Action Against Drugs (AAD) is a anti-drugs organisation of former IRA members and perhaps using IRA weapons. The ‘recruitment’ graffiti and warning to drug-dealers shown above is at the junction of Albert Street and Divis Street in west Belfast.
For more in the graffiti war against dealers, see 2017’s U’ll Do Nottin! and 2018’s Drug Dealers Will Be Shot.
For the mental health board, see Keep Ahead With Your Mental Health.
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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.
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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).
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Extramural Activity 