Here are two shots of a long mural between Mountforde Road and Beechfield Street in east Belfast. It features a tree growing out of a book, a golden teapot, with teabag hanging out the side, and a street scene. “Drugs Out” has been helpfully graffitied at the far end.
There doesn’t seem to be any information at all about this mural on-line. So, if you have any leads, please e-mail or leave a comment.
A pair of boards have been added to either side of one of the Bone memorials in Clós Ard An Lao, one for Na Fıanna Éıreann – the boys – and one for Cumann Na gCaılíní – the girls. The words are those of the Marching Song Of Na Fıanna Éıreann, except that in the second verse (the third stanza shown, first in the image below) the words “Cumann Na gCaılınní [sic]” have been inserted instead of “Fıanna Éıreann”.
The third image, below, shows the whole wall; for a close-up of the central boards, commemorating locals who lost their lives in the troubles, see Bone Memorial.
Six of the seven New Lodge tower blocks each feature two hunger strikers, on the narrow sides of the building. Those featured are the ten who died in 1981 along with Frank Stagg and Michael Gaughan. Here are images of five of them. Above is Raymond McCreesh, below is Kieran Doherty with a tricolour and ‘Justice for the Craigavon 2’, third is Martin Hurson and a Palestinian flag, fourth is Francis Hughes, and fifth is Frank Stagg.
An annotated Google map and a table give the Irish, English and former names of the flats (“houses”) as well as their locations and the hunger strikers on each.
Above and below is the scene at the end of summer in the courtyard of the Rex Bar – bunting and bouquets join the flags of the home nations and various boards celebrating the queen’s diamond jubilee and commemorating the 36th Ulster division “who selflessly gave their lives for King and county at the battle of the Somme”. The new boards (on the left hand side of the wide shot) were featured previously in The Last Post, along with the Union flag of The People’s Army. For the same scene ten years previously, see Betting Office.
Here are two new boards in the courtyard of the Rex Bar on the Shankill Road, describing the formation of the Ulster Volunteers (‘A Force For Ulster’) and commemorating the losses suffered by the 36th (Ulster) Division of the British Army, which the Volunteers became, at the Somme and in other battles, mowed down by “the Hun machine guns” (‘The Great War’).
‘A Force For Ulster’ includes photographs of the recent centenary re-enactments of the Balmoral Review, the Ulster Covenant, the formation of the Volunteers (“east” and “west”) and “Operation Lion” – more commonly known as the Larne Gun-Running.
According to the ‘The Great War’ board, 32,186 men from west Belfast were killed, wounded, or missing. “To them bravery was without limit, to us memory is without end”. The board shows the Thiepval Memorial To The Missing Of The Somme against a background of portraits.
A Che Guevara quote – “I don’t care if I fall as long as someone else picks up my gun and keeps on shooting” – unifies two panels bearing masked men firing funeral volleys, Irish and Palestinian shields, and “Our day will come” in both Irish and Arabic.
Above is a recent mural by Damian Walker in the New Lodge, in support of republican prisoners in Maghaberry, showing a single shirtless prisoner with a flower (? – see the close-up below) surrounded by three baton-wielding officers. Sponsored the 32-County Sovereignty Movement (web).
A. E. Housman’s 1919 short poem “Here dead we lie” is featured, together with the poppies that grew on the Western Front in WWI, in this UVF commemorative mural. The 36th (Ulster) Division is not mentioned specifically; the plaque on the right-hand side (which pre-dates the mural) lists the names of five UVF members killed in the 70s who are depicted in the mural just out of picture but seen below in a wide shot of both murals (and by itself in C Coy Street). For a similar connecting of the two Ulster Volunteer Forces, see 100 Years Apart, Armed & Ready, Years Of Sacrifice, and others. Another wide shot is given in C Coy Street, taken from the main road and shows that the fish-and-chip shop on the Shankill is called “A Salt And Battered”.
“Here dead we lie, because we did not choose, to live and shame the land, from which we sprung. Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose, but young men think it is, and we were young.”
