Dan Winter, along with James Wilson and James Sloan, founded the Orange Institution in Loughgall in 1796 in response to sectarian tensions over land. After a decisive victory by the Protestant ‘Peep O’ Day Boys’ over the Catholic ‘Defenders’, the Order was founded and Catholics driven out with the threat ‘to hell or to Connaught’.
A new board has gone up at the junction of the Falls and Glen roads (on the site of the former Andersonstown RUC station) commemorating the death of Pat Finucane (on February 12th, 1989), alleging collusion between the MI5, the UDA, the UDR, and the RUC, and asking for an inquiry.
Geordie Bell was caretaker at the Short Strand community centre, on the other side of this mural, as well as a trade unionist and republican. A piece of art in the Skainos centre is dedicated to his memory (East Belfast Mission).
“Not as Catholics or Protestants, not as Nationalists or Unionists, but as Belfast workers standing together.” Belfast City Hall has a number of colourful stained-glass windows, one of which is shown here. It features Belfast industry and Jim Larkin who, while more famous for the Dublin lock-out of 1913, also led a strike by the National Union Of Dock Labourers (NUDL) in Belfast in 1907. In 1908 the ITGWU (the One Big Union, OBU) was formed.
The area known as the Pound Loney is featured in a long mural in Durham Street. The Pound Loney is Divis or the lower part of Divis on either side of Cullingtree Road; a “loney” is a lane and originally a natural path, in this case next to a stream beside the sheep-pound that existed before the area was developed for housing (Old Belfast Districts).
The mural features many of the place-names, landmarks, and personalities of yesteryear, including the Arcadian cinema on Albert Street – left of centre in the full shot below; see also the two images below of the Arcadian in happier days and in 1969, at the start of the troubles (images from Cinema Treasures and the Belfast Forum). Also featured are the Divis tower block, the Blessed Virgin mural, Barney’s mill, McGahan’s pub, Saint Peter’s. The streets include Barrack St, Galway St, Cullingtree Rd, Scotch St, Christian Place, Derby St, Castle St, Pound St, Nail St, Currie St, Albert St, Brook St, Jude St, Hamill St, Divis St, Milford St and Massereene (Row or Path or Walk) in Divis flats. If you can identify any of the characters in the mural, please leave a comment.
Two poems are featured prominently and another two alluded to in this Newtownards mural and memorial garden to WWI soldiers. The main panel features part of an anti-war work by Owen Griffith, Lest We Forget. Robert Laurence Binyon’s For The Fallen is featured on the stone, above a line of Latin from Horace’s Odes (III.2) – On Virtue(which most famously re-appears in Owen’s Dulce Et Decorum Est). On the left and right (see the wide shot at the very bottom) there appear the mottos of the Royal Irish Rifles – ‘Quis separabit’, which comes from Romans 8:35 – and the Royal Artillery – ‘Ubique – Quo Fas Et Gloria Ducunt’, which comes from Kipling’s Ubique.
For the (WWI) 13th battalion RIR, see Regimental List and similarly for the 16th (rather than the 17th) “Pioneers”. For the (WWII) 5th Anti-Aircraft battery, see Newtownards History.
At the very top of the Whiterock Road, which is to say, half-way up Sliabh Dubh/Black Mountain, there are two shrines (wide shot below). The shrine to the Virgin Mary includes the apocalyptic prayer shown above: Mary, mystical rose, mother of the church, help the holy father of all bishops, all priests and all religious. Intercede for the sorely-pressed church of our times. Pray for the threatened world into which satan’s hot breath is blowing. Draw us all to your immaculate motherly heart. You are the mother of pity. Amen.
The Stella Maris Hostel (in Garmoyle Street) provides services to homeless alcoholics. Above their door is this mosaic of St. Brendan, off “crossing the Atlantic 600 AD” to discover (what would later become) North America (though perhaps it was only the Faroes or the Canaries or … ) in a boat clad in nothing more than leather.
Extramural Activity 