PUL – Page 27 – Paddy Duffy Collection

The Pitt Stop

2024-12-292025-01-13Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

The Pitt Stop caravan is a new community-services centre run by the Residents’ Association (Fb) in Pitt Park, east Belfast, a stone’s throw from the Ballymac Friendship Centre (Fb). The relationship between the two is unclear – this Sunday World article quotes one person as saying the some residents felt themselves excluded from the Centre and that the “good people of Pitt Park” need “access to a facility”. The article also suggests possible connections to the local UVF and to drug-dealing; the Association denounced the write-up in a brief Facebook post.

The Park itself was renovated in 2024 (Belfast Live before | after).

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Copyright © 2024 Paddy Duffy
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Hair Style

2024-12-292025-01-15Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

This is an older piece but one seen only on weekends and in the evenings because it is painted on shutters, specifically the shutters of DC-Rays (formerly D-Rays) hair salon (Fb) in Albertbridge Road, east Belfast.

The work was painted by Glen Molloy (ig) c. 2017; for other pieces in this style, see the gallery of ten famous faces in Corporation Street from 2016 or the Three Jimmys in Exchange Place from 2017.

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The Ledley Hall

2024-12-242025-07-16Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

This is a repainting of the Ledley Hall/Queen’s Jubilee mural at the junction with Kingswood Street, part of the 2016 re-imaging of Lord Street, east Belfast, sponsored by the Housing Executive and CharterNI. The mural shows the hall past and present and features local figures Bob Yarr (OBE), Eddie Witherspoon, John Cross (BEM), John Currans, Sam Rainey, and Reggie Morrow.

The ‘Lord Street Remembers’ piece is from 2015, by Glenn Black and Ken Maze of Blaze FX (web).

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Copyright © 2023 Paddy Duffy
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York Road Civil Defence Hall

2024-12-222025-02-13Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

The HUBB community centre (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.

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” (Hogg). 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).

Belfast was bombed by the Germans four times in April and May of 1941. 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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Taken By Storm

2024-12-072025-01-24Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

The UVF hooded gunmen mural in Mount Vernon, which “greets” drivers coming off the M2 at the Shore Road, has been damaged by Storm Darragh, which had winds of 90 m.p.h. and more, with the apex and a further 6 feet of masonry coming down. (Belfast Live gallery of NI damage | BBC gallery of UK storm damage.)

This wall is NIHE property (pdf) and the need for repair or reconstruction might delay any repainting of the mural.

The mural in this location dates back to 2001 (here are images from 2006 and 2012) and was touched up in 2022 (T01300 | X10660). The original mural – which dates back to the ceasefire era (1995) – was on a gable at the front of the estate but the entire block of houses was razed – see T00138 | D00382.

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An Elephant At Home

2024-12-032025-01-02Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

This new Glengormley street art pays tribute to an elephant from Bellevue Zoo during WWII.

In response to the blitz of April 1941, thoughts turned to what might happen if the zoo was bombed. Thirty-three animals that would be dangerous to the public (if they escaped) were executed. A zoo-keeper, Denise Weston Austin, brought Sheila, an Asian elephant, to her home on the Whitewell Road, where she lived for several weeks, before being returned to the zoo in time for the bombing of May. (See WP for dates of the Belfast blitz.) For photographs of Sheila and Denise, and the tale of how Sheila’s absence was discovered, see Wartime NI.

By DanLeo (web), with DaisyChain (web).

Ballyclare Road (just below Moss Road) in Glengormley, Newtownabbey.

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Continuing Conflicts

2024-12-012025-06-20Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

The war memorial garden in City Way (Sandy Row) commemorates those from the Great War, World War II, and “Continuing Conflicts” which includes the “Troubles”. There is also a fourth, smaller, stone, with John Maxwell Edmonds’s memorial epitaph.

“The Great War 1914-1918: In memory of the fallen”, with John McCrae’s poem ‘In Flanders Fields‘.
“Second World War 1939-1945: Freedom is the sure possession of those have the courage to defend it. Their ideal is our legacy. Their sacrifice is our inspiration.”
“Continuing Conflicts: We remember those who have given their lives. The wounded and those who serve in continued conflicts around the world.”

The Battles Of Britain

2024-11-282025-02-02Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

These wreaths are mounted next to the Battle Of Britain board on Beverley Street (Band Of Brothers) which celebrates and commemorates the Polish pilots in the RAF’s 303 Squadron during WWII.

The first and third of these three wreaths – which were new at the end of 2024 – combine WWI and WWII. In the first, we see poppies and the familiar image of a WWI soldier standing by a graveside, along with an image of a WWII fighter-plane (probably a Spitfire or Hurricane) flying over a crowd of soldiers. The third combines the red-and-white of Poland with a poppy. (See also the wreath from 2018, which placed Polish writing and imagery within a wreath of poppies.)

1st July 1916

2024-11-262025-01-04Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

This is a mural with a twenty-year history, in Watson Street, Portadown.

The mural began with the single panel on the left (2004 D01505) which shows a red hand on top of a St Andrew’s Saltire. Three panels were then added: and Ulster Banner, a Union Flag, and a red hand, along with the title “Battle Of [The] Somme, 1st July 1916” (see C01914 from 2010), though the connection to the Somme is unclear. The whole thing was repainted without the red hand in the fourth panel (perhaps c. 2012 – Street View and M10297 from 2013).

Here Dead We Lie

2024-11-262025-01-02Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

There are new boards (and a black background) for the memorial plaque to Harris Boyle and Wesley Somerville in Portadown.

On the left: “The onus on future generations is to keep our country British, to defend our people from republican enemies and to remember with pride those who sacrificed their tomorrows for our today. UVF.”

And on the right, the words of A.E. Housman’s 1936 poem: “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.”

Despite the WWI references and imagery, the two people commemorated belong to the Troubles era. Boyle and Somerville were UDR soldiers and UVF volunteers. They were “killed in action” when the bomb they were planting on the minibus of the Miami Showband went off prematurely. Of the pair, only Somerville’s arm with its “UVF Portadown” tattoo remained identifiable. Three members of the band were also killed in the attack. (WP) The plaque goes back to (at least) 2008: Boyle & Somerville.

Princess Way/Gloucester Avenue, Portadown.