industry/H&W/flax/rope – 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

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Copyright © 2026 Paddy Duffy
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Soho Foundry

2026-05-242026-09-28Extramural Activity1 Comment

The Townsend Enterprise Park, at the Falls end of Townsend Street, was formerly the site of the Soho Foundry, established by brothers James and Robert Shipboy MacAdam, making (among other things, including scutching machines) large turbines for export across the world – “the largest steam-engine ever made in Ireland” (at 62″ in diameter) went to the Nile in Egypt in 1848 (Grace’s | Grace’s). The river portrayed is the Farset, which gives Belfast its name, and which can still be seen in the Park; the vast majority of the Farset had been paved over by 1848 (BBC).

This new mural on the wall of the Enterprise Park recalls the area’s industrial past. By Imogen Donegan (ig) with support from Daisy Chain (web).

When All That Was Solid Melted Into Air

2026-04-062026-04-14Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

At its peak, the Harland & Wolff shipyard employed 35,000 people (IndustriAll) and the flat-capped worker became a symbol of east Belfast, along – much later – with Samson and Goliath, the two gantry cranes at the shipyard that were raised in 1974 and 1969 (WP) and which have become the symbol of Belfast.

The title of this entry is the first line of Martin Mooney’s poem ‘Launching The Whaler Juan Peron‘.

The silhouetted workers and cranes are on a mobile office in Fraser Pass, Newtownards Road, Belfast, at the end of the Pitt Stop next to the Belfast Bikes racks.

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Copyright © 2026 Paddy Duffy
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Fine Heads

2026-03-152026-03-26Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

Belfast match-maker Maguire & Paterson made matches under the brands Buffalo, Swift, Bo-Peep, and City Hall (and perhaps others). The factory was on the Donegall Road, on what became, for a time, the site of West Side Stores (and is now a set of houses facing the Park Centre. Here is an aerial view (on Fb) of the factory in 1947, when Celtic Park was still standing.

This tribute to the Belfast match is by Leo Boyd (web) in Beechmount Avenue, west Belfast.

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Copyright © 2026 Paddy Duffy
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Sea And Do

2025-12-212026-04-03Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

A long wall along Duncrue Street has been painted with five pieces – two by Karl Fenz (web), two by Danni Simpson (web), one by HMC (web) – with design-work – presumably by Rob Hilken (web) – between the representational pieces. The photographs below span a month, as the artists painted at different times in late 2025 and generally had to contend with poor winter weather.

While HMC features a kingfisher, the others make reference to the shipping industry and the harbour as a gateway to the world. Above and immediately below: a vintage dock-worker is seen through a port-hole gazing pensively over one of the H&W gantry cranes and a ship in Belfast harbour. In the other Fenz piece, a crane can be seen in the reflection of the glasses of a visitor to the Titanic Quarter. The one work by Simpson features a cruise-ship (perhaps the Odyssey that was stuck in Belfast for four months – AP), and the compass and globe in the other piece suggest that Belfast is a gateway to the wider world.

October 31st:

December 21st:

December 21st:

November 30th:

November 16th – cartoon over the doodle-grid:

October 31st:

November 30th:

October 31st – blacking and cartoon on top of the doodle-grid:

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Titanic Town 1912

2024-12-222026-10-28Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

“North Belfast dockers, millworkers, shipyard workers – Titanic town 1912″.

The Titanic mural in north Belfast is now twelve years old; it is generally faded and peeling in several places, and the plaster filling a crack in the walls has fallen out (as can be seen in the images above and below). (For the mural previously, see X01139.)

Along the bottom are the names of various Belfast pubs and other businesses: The Waterloo, The Terminus, The Sportsman’s Arms, The White Hart, The Bowling Green, The City Arms, The Orpheus – York Street, Railway Bar – Canning Street [image from 1970], The Edinburgh Castle [the boat of the Union-Castle line, launched 1910, built at H&W?], York Street Mill, The Gibralter [sic] Bar [whose then-owner was killed in 1972], Ye Old Castle [a bar (and restaurant?) bombed in 1971], The White Lion.

St. Vincent Street, north Belfast

The Factory Girls

2024-08-042026-08-29Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

Tillie & Henderson’s shirt factory opened in 1856 at the junction of Abercorn Road and Foyle Road, Derry (next to the ‘Hands Across The Divide’ statue) and survived until 2003 when it was demolished after a fire (BBC); an apartment block was planned for the site (Derry Journal | BBC) but as yet nothing has happened. It was the largest such factory in the world and one of 44 shirt factories in the city in 1900, all of which employed women, many starting in their teens.

Derry Of The Past has a gallery of historical images.

The murals are in the courtyard of the Craft Village in Shipquay Street; they were designed by Joe Campbell and painted by UVArts (web).

(BBC | BBC | DEPOT | BelTel)

Auld Cobblers

2024-03-292024-08-27Extramural Activity1 Comment

This new three-storey mural by Dee Craig (Fb) is at the city end of Newtownards Road and so serves as a highly-visible introduction to east Belfast. People arriving in the area are now greeted with a vintage image of a smiling bearded man in a cloth cap, surrounded by occupations from the industrial era: “Cobbler, rag’n’bone man, fish monger, welder, builder, sweep, carpenter, window cleaner, butcher”, capped off by an inspirational “Be your best”, with yellow highlights that match the colour of the shipyard cranes Samson and Goliath.

The Glorious Dead

2022-12-182026-07-09Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

Four of the 700 NHS staff in the UK to die of Covid during the pandemic have come from Northern Ireland, the most recent being dementia specialist Alan Henry in Antrim hospital (Express | BelTel | iTV). In the south, Defence Forces have been deployed to three nursing homes while 6,400 health workers are off sick (Irish Times). The mural above shows a masked nurse and doctor among a field of poppies. It has been added below the three painted boards commemorating Titanic, the Somme, and the WWII Blitz.

On the exterior of the Connswater Community Centre, east Belfast