metalwork – Paddy Duffy Collection

The Shipyard Church

2026-10-112026-10-12Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

“Welcome to Titanic People, a celebration of the intelligence, creativity and courage of people who define this legendary Belfast neighbourhood. The spot where you’re standing may seem like a rather unremarkable part of Belfast, but it’s the epicentre of some of the city’s most remarkable citizens and their fascinating life stories. Some famous, other relatively unknown, but each born or employed within the sound of the shipyards’ riveters’ hammers and all with compelling personal histories that continue to reverberate locally and internationally. Westbourne Presbyterian Church whose grounds play host to this exhibition, is known locally as the Shipyard Church due to its proximity to Belfast’s famous docks and the home of the world-famous ship builders, Harland & Wolff. Opened in 1880, many of the workers who helped to build RMS Titanic would have brought their families here each week for Sunday Worship. It still serves a local congregation today and the pews inside haven’t changed. When you’ve finished reading about Titanic People, you are more than welcome to come inside and take the same seats occupied by those shipyard workers more than a century ago.”

Among those profiled are James Ellis, Marie Jones, Rev. John Redmond, St John Greer Ervine, Brian Desmond Hurst, and Henry Pottinger.

The installation surrounds the front entrance of Westbourne Presbyterian, the “Shipyard Church”, which was built in 1877 (Stone Database). To the right is a new WWII memorial (City Council planning application), shown last below.

The German Luftwaffe blitzed Belfast on four occasions in April and May of 1941, targeting especially the industrial yards of east Belfast, including H&W shipbuilding and Short Brothers. Nearby streets were hit in the attacks (see Belfast Blitz), and some suffered very heavy damage, including Thistle, Tower, and Westbourne streets. Westbourne Presbyterian church was hit during the war, but survived.

Newtownards Road, east Belfast

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2026 Paddy Duffy
T09637 T09638 T09639 T09640
T09636

Crown Of Lilies

2026-07-022026-10-14Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

This entry updates one from May, which showed the replacement memorial board for QEII in Glengormley. To the right of the info board there is now a case containing a crown with a bouquet of orange lilies in front, and a smaller arrangement of orange and purple flowers (the colours of the UVF, though this is a UDA area) above.

Queen’s Avenue, Glengormley, Newtownabbey

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2026 Paddy Duffy
T09482 [T09483] T09485 T09484 T09486

I’ve Been All Around This World

2026-01-112026-08-28Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

The Face was last seen on the Cupar Way war-wall in 2019 (see Please Respect Artwork). It was taken down (for reasons unknown) and put into storage in a works yard off Lanark Way, from where it was stolen it by thieves (perhaps thinking it might be valuable for its metal); it was found abandoned near the Slıabh Dubh car park (Belfast Live).

It has now found a home in a new coffee- and souvenir-shop (called Bean Around The World) that has been punched into the fencing at the top of Cupar Way in the shadow of a business park.

Next to The Face is a map of Ireland and Britain divided into regions, and a montage of black-and-white photographs from the Troubles (at least some of which come from the Belfast Archive Project).

The Face was created by Kevin Killen (web) and “the Students from Impact Training (NI) Ltd, Belfast To celebrate and commemorate the Industrial History and Heritage of Belfast City.”

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2026 Paddy Duffy
T08353 T08354 T08355 [T08356] T08357 T08358 T08359 [T08360] T08361

Remembering Is Not So Easy

2026-01-102026-08-28Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

On the anniversary of David Ervine’s death, January 8th, a new board was launched in his memory, with images of Ervine “yearning for peace” in the cages of Long Kesh, where he met Gusty Spence (the pair can be seen together in the middle of the first column of photographs).

After his release, Ervine turned to politics, running unsuccessfully as a PUP candidate for Pottinger in the Belfast City Council elections of 1985 (WP); he would eventually be successful in 1997. In 1998 he was returned by Belfast East in the Assembly election (ARK). He helped bring about the loyalist ceasefire in 1994 – which was read aloud by Spence (youtube) – and was pro-Agreement in 1998 (DIB | Guardian | Slugger).

The information about the Memory Chair sculpture makes mention of Ervine’s boots but it seems they have not survived the mothballing of the sculpture which was last seen on site – boots included – in 2014.

Montrose Street South, replacing the various pieces seen in late 2024’s Today, Everyday, And Always.

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2026 Paddy Duffy
T08341 T08342 T08343 T08344
T08349 T08345 T08348 T08346
T08347 T08350

The Isles Of Pretani

2025-12-172026-08-28Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

“Late 19th century gas lamp donated by Pretani Associates, Dr Ian Adamson OBE and Helen Brooker, to the Dalaradia Historical Group to recognise their work on Common Identity. This work promotes one cultural narrative for the British Isles to which all can belong. A narrative which begins by understand the first known name of the islands – The Isles of Pretani. Knowledge brings a light which reveals the way forward towards stability within these islands. Dedicated by Professor Wesley Hutchinson on the 27th November 2019.”

The lamp was unveiled in September 2020 (Pretani Associates). For (a little) more on the claim that the Pretani inhabited both Britain and Ireland, see Kingdom Of The Pretani and the Visual History page on the Influence Of Jim Fitzpatrick.

Shore Road, north Belfast, next to Lest We Forget.

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2025 Paddy Duffy
T08153 T08154

Ulster’s Brave Young Men

2025-10-032025-11-01Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

The background to the Avenue Road “Memorial to the 36th (Ulster) Division and to other men of Ulster who served in the Great War 1914 – 1918” has been repainted in the purple and orange of the UVF and the wall simplified by the removal of two smaller boards to each side of the main board (above) which shows soldiers looking out over the edge of a WWI trench. (For the the previous boards, see the Peter Moloney Collection.)

The seat is dedicated to “Jack”, an 11-year-old member of the Avenue Road Memorial flute band who died in 2019 (News Letter), with boxing gloves and emblem of the NI soccer association. 2 Timothy 4:7 says, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”

Avenue Road, Lurgan

The final image is of a board in nearby King’s Park Mews to a soldier who died on “the homefront” – Dublin during the 1916 Rising – Second Lieutenant James Howard Calvert of the 6th Royal Irish Rifles. Calvert lived at 41 Avenue Road, Lurgan.

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2025 Paddy Duffy
T07790 T07791 T07792 T07789
T07793

Funeral Followed Funeral

2025-02-122025-03-14Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

This memorial to the victims of the Omagh bombing is in a green-space along the Strule river about 300 metres (WP) from the spot where an RIRA car-bomb exploded on the afternoon of 15th of August 1998, killing twenty-nine people and injuring more than 200 others.

The garden was opened on the tenth anniversary, in 2008 (replacing a smaller obelisk). It includes 31 mirrors on poles (including a set of unborn twins in the number of deceased) which are part of a reflective system that sends sunlight towards a crystal pillar in Market Street that marks that spot of the bomb (Troubles Archive).

There are also a series of engraved stones on an arc around the pool that tell the story of the day and its aftermath, as well as naming the dead:

“Weather wise it was one of the best days that summer had seen. Ordinary people were doing ordinary things on an ordinary day. In one fateful moment all this was changed forever. Time stood still, futures were obliterated, loves were shattered, hearts were broken. In the carnage, emergency personnel and many ordinary people reached out, helped the injured, gave hope to the dying and held the dead. That evening a great silence descended on the town. In the week which followed the people walked with one another in the companionship or shared grief as funeral followed funeral. From all over the world came visitors, messages of sympathy, condemnation, solidarity, hope and practical support. The Omagh bomb was the largest single atrocity in over thirty years of violence in which over 3700 people were killed. The bomb took place four months after the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement of 10 April 1998, subsequently endorsed in referenda in both parts of Ireland on 22 May 1998. In the years that followed people Omagh and elsewhere sought to rebuild their lives, their families, their community, and to create a new future. Regardless of the past, every new days dawns as a gift laden with its own possibilities, as the morning sun banishes the darkness of night.”

One of the stones reads “Bear in mind these dead/Coınnıgh ı gcuımhne na maırıbh seo/Tened en cuenta a estos muertos – (John Hewitt)”; two of the victims were Spanish.

Drumragh Avenue, Omagh

“Saturday 15 August 1998 at 3.10 PM. To honour and remember the 31 men, women and children who were killed, the hundreds injured and those whose lives were changed forever in the Omagh bomb. ‘The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it’ (John 1.5)”

“To honour and remember 31 people murdered and hundreds injured from three nations by a dissident republican terrorist car bomb. (Omagh Support And Self Help Group)”

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2025 Paddy Duffy
T06244 T06246 T06245
T06234 T06235 T06236 T06237 T06238 T06239 T06240 T06241 T06242 T06243

Garden Of Reflection

2025-01-312026-08-28Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

Here is a gallery of the metal-works which are inserted (c. 2020) into the fencing along the front of the 1st Shankill Somme Association’s ‘Garden Of Reflection’, and with the (replacement) plaques added to the stone when the wall and gate-columns were rebuilt in 2021.

For images from within, see Because He Loves What Is Behind Him and Somme Memorial.

Shankill Road, west Belfast

Row On Row

2024-07-182026-05-30Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

This images in this entry depict, above and below the information board about the park, the World Wars installation inside the park and the banners on the fence along Derrycoole Way.

There is an annual commemoration of the fallen in the World Wars in Rathcoole each year. The monument consisting of mourning soldiers and sandbags) was created in 2020 (Fb group | News Letter) and the bench was perhaps added in 2022. Images from the 2023 ‘row on row’ commemoration can be seen at NI World. The Row On Row group (web) hope to create a permanent memorial on the spot.

Rathcoole People’s Park was renamed the Sir James Craig Play Park by Antrim & Newtownabbey council in September, 2021, as part of the council’s celebrations of the centenary of Northern Ireland (NI World).

The banners on the side are from the Rathcoole Protestant Boys flute band (Fb) whose annual parade was at the end of June, and the Whitehouse Williamite Historical Society (Fb) whose fun-day on June 15th included a historical re-enactment of William’s army landing at Whitehouse. (For more on William’s connection to Whitehouse, see June 14th, 1690.)

Gaırdín Thomáıs Uí Chléırıgh

2024-03-302026-08-30Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

Thomas Clarke/Tomás Ó Cléırıgh (b. 1858) has a long career in Irish fenianism, including fleeing to America after firing at police (at age 20) and 15 years of hard labour for an attempted bombing in London, beginning in 1883 (DIB). He is best known for his role, along with Sean Mac Dıarmada (The Mainspring), as architect of the Easter Rising. He is particularly honoured in Dungannon, where he grew up from the age of nine onward, the last posting of his British-Army–sergeant father. This statue in the Lisnahull area was unveiled (in this location) in late November 2021 (We Are Tyrone | NI World).

The circular placard is on O’Neill Park, across the street from the Garden.

The ‘East Tyrone Remembers’ board to IRA volunteers Sean Loughran, Patrick Carty, Patrick Quinn, Patrick McDonald, Kevin Murray, Paddy Kelly, Patrick Vincent – either this one exactly or a re-print of it – is mounted periodically. It first appeared in 2010 to be replaced by the Clonoe Martyrs. It was back again in 2013 and has been in place since 2017.

See previously from Lisnahull: Ireland’s Hunger Strike Martyrs