Posters on a drainpipe on the Falls Road next to Gerry Carroll’s constituency office: “Keep Stormont closed. Smash Stormont – It can’t be made more equal, less corrupt or used to promote socialism. Close it now! Sign the petition … Published by Socialist Democracy.”
With “Saol trí Ghaeilge [atá uainn]” below [We want life using Irish].
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The Ulster Reform Club (web) opened in 1885 and has resided at 4 Royal Avenue, Belfast since then. The mosaic is of the emblem of the club; it includes the flag of Ulster (red hand on a cross with yellow background) with a three-in-one shamrock (Ireland), rose (England), and thistle (Scotland) in the top-left quadrant
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The Young Citizen Volunteers began as a civic organisation and domestic reserve force in 1912 but by the time of the first World War had become a battalion of the Ulster Volunteers and went to the Western Front as the fourteenth battalion of the Royal Irish Rifles, part of the 36th (Ulster) Division, landing at Boulogne in October, 1915. The force was mainly Protestant but History Hub Ulster has a page on the 42 Ulster Catholics who served in the 14th (YCV) RIR.
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The Harland & Wolff cranes are called Samson and Goliath after two biblical giants. This miniature was spotted in a window in Castlereagh Place.
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As mentioned in an entry about Dalaradia, the HUBB community centre (web | Fb) in north Belfast has, since 2010, been based in what used to be a World War II Civil Defence air-raid shelter, which it cleaned and renovated (Tele). The original hall is depicted in this mural on the side of the HUBB. Belfast was bombed by the Germans four times in April and May of 1941.
In 1940, Belfast was protected by thirty-eight anti-aircraft guns. The German Luftwaffe flew a reconnaissance flight over Belfast on November 30th, 1940 and a test mission of eight planes on April 7th, 1941 concluded that Belfast’s defences were, “inferior in quality, scanty and insufficient” (Elaine Hogg/Glenravel History). 150 bombers would blitz Belfast the following week, on Easter Tuesday, April 15th, and the seven guns that had been in operation ceased firing, believing, falsely, that RAF planes were also in the sky (WP).
In the blitz of Easter Tuesday, 1941, more than 900 people died, 1,500 were injured, and half the houses in Belfast were damaged (WP). According to Elaine Hogg’s research in the ‘Darker Side Of Belfast’ series, 100,000 people left the city in the remainder of the month, due to shock, fear, and the squalid conditions and unruly behaviour that followed the bombing.
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Here are two portraits from the “Loyalist Avenue” mural and memorial garden hear Sandy Row. If you know anything about the people depicted, please leave a comment. The central figure (in the wide shot) is Gareth Morrison (see Big Henry). For the King William mural, see British And Proud.
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Gareth “Big Henry” Morrison was a drummer in the Ulster First Flute band in Sandy Row and a Rangers supporter. He died at age 26 on June 23rd, 2013 from a dose of PMA (BelTel), one of eight such deaths in Northern Ireland and seven in western Scotland. (1997 image of a UFFB mural in Linfield Road.)
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Ross Wilson’s statue ‘Mother – Daughter – Sister’ was launched in 2015 (Art Council NI), two years after his King William mural which towers over it (see final image). “This sculpture celebrates the female cultural identity of Sandy Row and the generational contribution women have made to this community both in the family and workplace.” With a verse from the Doris Day song ‘Que Sera Sera’ from Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much.
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Here is a selection of posters from throughout the past year (2017) from Belfast and London-/Derry. Above is an Anarchists In Ireland poster welcoming refugees, while the second image is of a passenger and parcel service to Romania from Dublin. The others are for republican marches and causes.
Previous collections of (mostly torn) posters: We Had Our Distresses | Layer Upon Layer
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“‘A’ Battalion Sandy Row remembers” fellow members of the South Belfast Brigade. The use of poppies in UDA murals is unusual, as it is the Ulster Volunteer Force that shares its name with the Ulster Volunteers who fought in WWI as the 36th (Ulster) Brigade.
This new Sandy Row mural is next to the tiles on the David Scott Tile Refinery.
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Seosamh Mac Coille Collection 