Tomorrow (August 30th, at 12:30) there will be a family fun-day and the launch of a new mural of a colourful drummer boy. The mural is on Peter’s Hill; it takes the place of the “Original Belfast” murals (2009 and 2020) and before that a UDA emblem (M02480).
Painted by Glen Molloy (ig) with support from SAFE Shankill (see Woodvale OK), Alternatives (web), Executive Office, Communities In Transition.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2023 Paddy Duffy
T02981 [T02974] [T02980] T02982
Glen Molloy’s (ig) tribute to friend Mark Knox, who died in 2021 (Funeral Times).
Woodstock Place, Belfast
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2023 Paddy Duffy
T02973
The movie that made child-actress Shirley Temple a star was the December 1934 film Bright Eyes, in which she played an orphan, Shirley Blake, living with a wealthy and mean-spirited family but befriended by her godfather and pilot Loop Merritt (played by James Dunn in their third movie together that year, after Stand Up And Cheer! and Baby Take A Bow) (WP Bright Eyes | WP James Dunn). She was awarded a special Oscar for her performance the following year (WP).
The Strand Cinema in east Belfast opened a year later, on December 7th, 1935, and Bright Eyes was the first movie shown. The venue for a time operated exclusively as a concert hall (from 1984-1988); in 2013 it became the charity ‘Strand Arts Centre’, supporting a variety of arts in addition to a now-independent four-screen cinema operation (StrandArtsCentre History).
The 3-D mural by emic (ig) on the Pim’s Avenue side of the theatre reproduces a publicity photo from 1935.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2023 Paddy Duffy
T02926
“Big Ribbo” is David Conville, who died last year of injuries sustained in an assault by a friend (Bel Tel | Belfast Live). This memorial board shows him playing in the Ulster First Flute (Sandy Row) flute band (Fb).
For the bonfire mural, see Guiding Light.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2023 Paddy Duffy
T02918 T02919 Coolfin Street
The Shankill Area Social History (SASH) (Fb) celebrates the people and events of the Shankill Road with a new mural in Downing Street.
From left to right: girls wrapped in Union Flags watching the parade; boys on pallets; the Shankill Mission; Orange Order parade; the Summer festival in Woodvale Park (The Cabin); the former Belfast Savings Bank, now an undertaker’s; the Winter festival and switching-on of the Christmas tree lights, with Mrs. Claus, the Grinch in Santa costume, and last year’s (2022) celebrity guest Charlie Lawson (youtube); local band Casual Riots (ig). (SASH Fb Gallery)
For a mural of famous Shankill faces and places, see Save The Shankill.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2023 Paddy Duffy
T02915 [T02914]
A mammoth bonfire in Craigyhill (Larne) is again being built this year (for last year’s 202′ effort, see Commonwealth Handling Equipment). 30,000 pounds has already been spent on pallets (Sunday World) but the attempt to build a record bonfire and have the bonfire officially declared the world’s tallest by the Guinness Book Of World Records has now been substituted by a (justgiving) fundraiser for Larne child Pia-Grace who is suffering from cancer (Belfast Live). A two-day festival begins today (July 10th) at noon and the boney will be lit after dark on Eleventh Night.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2023 Paddy Duffy
T02943 [T02941] [T02942]
T02937
T02938 [T02939]
T02940
T02936 [T02935]
“O valiant hearts who to your glory came/Through dust of conflict and through battle flame//Tranquil you lie, your knightly virtue proved/Your memory hallowed [not “hollowed”] in the land you loved.” The hymn ‘O Valiant Hearts’ was a poem written during the first World War to commemorate the Allied dead, and was put to a variety of tunes during the 1920s, including arrangements by Vaughan Williams and Holst (WP); the most commonly sung tune, however, is that of Charles Harris (youtube, includes the full poem).
The memorial shown in the middle of the board is a Cross Of Sacrifice (see previously: One In Design And Intention) built on top of a German pill box at the centre of Tyne Cot cemetery, near Passchendaele, Belgium. The title of today’s post comes from remarks made by George V during a 1922 visit to the cemetery (History.org). The map in the background shows the area just south of Ypres (Canadian Soldiers).
The board is in Pim’s Avenue, Belfast, opposite the older YCV emblem shown below.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2023 Paddy Duffy
T02927 [T02928] T02929
“Willowfield Battalion.” The building on the corner of Willowfield Street and the Woodstock Road was demolished and rebuilt with a building whose gable wall is full of windows. As a result, the display of Somme-related boards (see 2017’s Faugh-A-Ballagh in the Seosamh Mac Coılle collection) has moved a short distance down the street to a gable that has been revealed by taking down two large trees. The panels remain as before, though a new version of the Somme board renders the information horizontally rather than vertically (above).
Above: “Never before was a debt owed to so few by so many. Generation after generation owe them everything. Lest we forget.” Winston Churchill’s line about the British Air Force in WWII, that “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few (youtube)“, is echoed in a board about the battles at the Somme between July 1st and November 18th, 1916. “The few” in this case, however, number nearly half a million dead and more than 72,000 missing.
Immediately below: “Only by remembering these men, and others like them, can we ever repay their memory.” The board shows the nine Victoria Cross recipients from the 36th (Ulster) Division in World War I (from 1917 and 1918) – E[dmund] De Wind, E[rnest] Seaman, C[ecil] L[eonard] Knox, N[orman] Harvey, (from 1916) G[eoffrey] St. G[eorge] S[hillington] Cather, W[illiam] F[rederick] MacFadzean, E[ric] N[orman] F[rankland] Bell, R[obert] Quigg, and J[ames] S[amuel] Emerson. The illustrations come from Cyril Falls’s book The History Of The 36th (Ulster) Division (from Project Gutenberg).
Apex: “1st July 1916 nothing finer was done in the war. The splendid troops, drawn from those volunteers who had banded themselves together for another cause, now shed their blood like water for the liberty of the world.”
Willowfield Street, east Belfast
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2023 Paddy Duffy
T02924 T02925 T02922 T02923
The Cuilcagh Boardwalk is a 2.8-mile trail that ends in stairs that climb to the top of Cuilcagh Mountain [Binn Chuilceach, chalky mountain] and the views it offers of the surrounding territory – hence the name “Stairway To Heaven”. The distance from boggy plain to chalky pinnacle is 700m – and eight million years of geological history (Cuilcagh Geopark). Then you walk back the same way (Walk NI).
Work by Friz (ig) in Wickham Place, Enniskillen, at the Belmore motel.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2023 Paddy Duffy
T02902
The troll under the East Bridge in Enniskillen is friendly, offering a flower to the sprites doing “The Dance” (the official name of the piece) to the music of a satyr. Mural by Kevin McHugh (ig).
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2023 Paddy Duffy
T02899 T02900 T02901 T02898
