This is the second mural in Derry to Sister Clare Crockett. The first was in her Brandywell home (see All Or Northing!!) while this one is in Shantallow. Crockett became a nun in 2001 and died at the age of 33 in an earthquake in Ecuador in 2016 – the mass for the seventh anniversary of her death was held last month (youtube).
This is the mural painted by UVArts (web) to accompany the About Us film exhibition that visited London-/Derry in March, showing life from the Big Bang until the present day, commissioned by Unboxed.
A new painting of Amelia Earhart has been created by JEKS (ig), on the side of the Foyle building, North West Regional College, on Queen’s Quay. A number of sources claim without citation or measurement that it is the tallest piece of street art in the north – both the BBC and the Chamber Of Commerce use the passive “thought to be”. Its closest competitor would be the recent piece by Zabou on the Telegraph Building in Belfast – see Broken Promises.
The Foyle Building has six “levels” (NWRC) while the original Telegraph Building had four storeys (Archiseek). In addition to comparing images of the two paintings, you can also judge by comparing Street View images of the buildings: Derry vs Belfast.
Information about Earhart’s connection to the Maiden City can be found in the entries on the printed board (But What Do Dreams Know Of Boundaries?) and the mosaic (Flying Solo) to Earhart in Derry.
“For Mickey Griffiths, the punk of this parish.” In the 1970s and ’80s, Mickey Griffiths from the Brandywell, Derry, served as drummer and lyricist for a series of Derry punk bands: Idol Threats, Dick Tracy & The Green Disaster, The Shameless Hussies, and The Hitlers (NIPunk). Griffiths died in November of 2018 (Derry Now) and this mural was painted in Castle Street/Magazine Street by UV Arts (ig) to remember both him and the 45th anniversary of the Undertones’s hit ‘Teenage Dreams’ (Fb).
Ireland’s most famous export is not its music – including Fontaines D.C. (web) – or its stout – including Guinness – but its people, about 10 million of them since 1800 (WP). The youngster in this new mural by Dublin artist ACHES (ig) is torn in different directions.
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.
Here is a gallery of images from the ‘Get Up’ paint jam, organised by Peaball (web) in Derry at the end of June as part of the Foyle Maritime Festival (ig).
In order (from top to bottom), there are three in Strand Road, from emic (web), KONE (ig), and ACHES (ig), five in Lower Clarendon Street, by RAZER (ig), Chose Letters (ig), Will Vibes (ig), Friz (web), DanLeo (web), and finally, three by Zippy (web) at The Lounge café in Clarendon Street.
The Menin Gate memorial, at the eastern edge of Ypres, Belgium, commemorates 54,896 Commonwealth soldiers who died in the area during WWI and whose bodies were not recovered. “To the armies of the British Empire who stood here from 1914 to 1918 and to those of their dead who have no known grave.”
The buglers below have remained unfinished since (at least) 2018.
Ebrington Street, off Bond’s Street, Londonderry, leading to the Ebrington Centre car park.
“Fáilte go dtí Brandywell [Tobar An Bhranda]” This mural featuring the rights of children was painted in Derry’s Brandywell area in 2014; it puts images alongside parts of Caroline Castle’s rendering of the UN’s Rights of the Child. One, for example, reads “Understand that all children are precious. Pick us up if we fall down and if we are lost lend us your hand. Give us things we need to make us happy and strong and always do your best for us whenever we are in your care. Right no. 3”.
John Meeke signed the Ulster Covenant in Dervock Orange Hall in 1912 and went to war with the Ulster Volunteers. Willie Redmond, brother of John Redmond, had been jailed three times and was a nationalist MP at Westminster when, at age 53, he signed up for service.
Major Redmond went over the top with the 16th (Irish) Division at Messines Ridge and was hit by machine-gun fire. Private Meeke, a stretcher-bearer with the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers in the 36th (Ulster) Division, found and stayed with Redmond under heavy fire, taking two bullets himself.
Redmond would die that night. He was awarded the Legion Of Honour by the French. His East Clare seat was taken by Éamon de Valera. Meeke survived after several surgeries. He was awarded the Military Medal by the British. After the World War, he joined the Specials and LOL 1001 in Benvarden before dying of TB in 1923 (NALIL | Irish Times | WP | BelTel).
This mural (and its very odd accompanying plaque, for a public mural) is in the Ebrington Centre car park, in the Waterside, Londonderry.
Paddy Duffy Collection 