“Pro tanto quid retribuamus?” – What shall we give in return for so much? – is the motto of Belfast. These instances are in Castle Street and in Fountain Place, which is “out the back of Boots” – generations of Belfasters (since 1975 – Belfast Live) have used Boots to move between Donegall Place and the Fountain area (or fountains (plural) – see Fountain Street Spirits).
(See previously: Pro Tanto on a mural of HMS Belfast | Pro Tanto on Clifton St Orange Hall.)
Warp, weave, scutch and hackle are actions in the processing of flax fibre (Ulster Linen).
Memories from the History Girl mural in east Belfast’s Thistle Court. (Close-ups below.)
We used to go to Church Street East Disco … It was brilliant. Dee Street Disco in the Community Centre was good too.
Geary’s and The Tab sold all the electrical goods. The TV rent man came on a Friday. We sometimes didn’t answer the door!
I loved Nabney’s, Burkes and Nellie Stewarts. Dora Burnes was a good wee shop too.
There was a swimming pool in Victoria Park that opened in the summer. It was always freezing though!
I used to buy a bag of broken biscuits and and damaged fruit as a treat, when I went to the cinema.
We used to get our hair cut in Sammy Sanford’s.
The Road was always busy – shops and bars all the way along.
Barlow’s hardware at the Conswater Bridge used to have all the plates and cups outside in crates for you to buy.
I drank in the Con Club. It was great – they didn’t let women in!
I came from Singapore to live here with my husband. He died and I went home, but had to come back to Belfast. I missed it too much … it’s my home now.
My granny had a bathroom. I thought that was great. Our toilet was in the yard …
I worked in the Ropeworks and love it … the craic was great.
I loved Joe Bump’s chippy – the pasties were great.
If you were late for work at the Ropeworks they locked the door and you lost your pay. Hardly anyone was ever late.
My grandpa took me to the shipyard and swung me on a crane in one of the workshops. My mummy was raging when she found out!
We used to play Kick the Tin … there were sometimes 30 of us all playing together …
I loved the smell of Inglis’ Biscuit Factory along the Road.
The was The Vulcan, The Ulster Arms, The Four and Twenty, The Clock Bar and The Armagh House. Hastings, who own all the hotels now, used to own a good lot of the bars on the Road.
I remember seeing a ship being launched in the yard. It was about 1976 and all the ones from Mersey Street School went. I met my daddy in the crowd of thousands.
You got your good shoes in Irvine’s and your gutties in Warwick’s. It’s still there.
My granny kept her milk in a bucket of water because she had no fridge.
I worked in the shipyard – left school on a Friday and started in the Yard on Monday.
Everyone had a net bag made in the Ropeworks. You don’t see them nowadays.
We followed the Glens everywhere, but a home match in the Oval was always the best craic.
All my mummy’s brothers were in the Army or Navy during the War … they all came back.
I remember Stanley Brookes. They cashed your Providence Cheques.
We used to go to the cinema on a Saturday morning for the Kids Club. It was always bunged!!
Siblings Soso and Omar Ashour were brought to a Gaza hospital in the first week of the Israeli attack. Artist Raed Yousef Qatanani (ig) took them as subjects (ig photo | ig video of the pair) for a painting which has in turn been reproduced on the International Wall in west Belfast as part of the Painting For Palestine project (Fb).
“‘The day has passed for patching up the capitalist system; it must go. [… We reject the firebrand of capitalist warfare and offer you the olive leaf of brotherhood and justice to and for all.]’ – James Connolly” [in 1910’s Labour, Nationality And Religion, part 6]
Lasaır Dhearg (web) paste-up at the Grosvenor Road entrance to the Royal, to coincide with the general strike of January 18th that included dieticians, physiotherapists, radiographers, midwives, and nurses (BBC).
In January 2024, in response to the prolonged Israeli attack on Gaza, many murals on the “International Wall” on Divis Street were painted out and work began on reproductions of artworks by artists from Palestine and elsewhere in the region. The project was called Painting For Palestine and a Facebook page and GoFundMe page were launched.
According to Bill Rolston (Fb) (who can be seen in the second image, below), there was a plan last Autumn that Palestinian artists would create their own “international wall” and include murals designed by CNR artists. The Hamas attack on October 7 and the subsequent Israeli invasion on Gaza – now ongoing for 108 days – put paid to that project, and instead art by Palestinian painters is being painted in Belfast in support of Palestine. (Here is an NVTv segment on the project.)
The first (left-most) panel will reproduce a mural called ‘The Land Is Ours’ by Mohammed Alhaj, Abdullah Al Najar, Rami Al Safadi, and Abdel Hamid Fares that once stood in a Gaza school; the second, next to the first, is currently blank (see the image above).
The grid and cartoon for a mural from digital artist Saïd Hassan (web):
Another image by digital artist Saïd Hassan, showing soldiers standing over dead children:
Four murals are being painted over what were previously Lenár Linn and Hunger Strikers (1916). The originals for these were designed by Ahmad Shaweesh (ig), Raed Qatanani (ig), ? [please get in touch], and Saïd Hassan (web).
Shaweesh’s piece is a deliberately unfinished image of a group of people, perhaps a family, in distress. Qatanani’s image is a portrait of Soso and Omar Ashour as they sat in a Gaza hospital during the first week of the Israeli invasion.
The original artist of this figure with a phoenix is unknown.
The last of these four murals is by Hassan and shows a woman cooking over an open fire in front of a tent in a refugee camp.
Here are three of the murals painted in Botanic Gardens for the Belfast mela – an Artsekta (web) project – which includes a festival of colours or “holi”.
Jack Nicholson and Noel Gallagher have disappeared from Glen Molloy’s (ig) Corporation Street gallery, replaced by Amy Winehouse (above), who died in 2011 (Guardian), and Terry Hall (below) of The Specials and Fun Boy Three, who died in December 2022 (BBC).
Patrick O’Connor was born on this day in 1924 on the lower Falls but after his father emigrated he spent his early years – until age 5 – with his grandparents in East Street in the Markets. It was as a high-schooler in New York that he adopted the name Pádraıc Fıacc (“fiach dubh” is “raven”) and began writing poetry. He settled in Glengormley upon his second and final return; it is not clear that he ever saw East Street lined with British Army soldiers, as shown in the mural above. He wrote of his early life in ‘First Movement’:
Low clouds, yellow in a mist wind Sift on far-off Ards Drift hazily … I was born on such a morning Smelling of the bone yards The smoking chimneys over the slate top roofs The wayward storm birds And to the east where morning is, the sea And to the west where evening is, the sea Threatening with danger And it would always darken suddenly
Some of Fıacc’s poems are in the TroublesArchive. He was interviewed by NVTv’s Bernard Conlon (Vimeo); he also appears in a reception in Belfast City Hall (youtube).
Here is a 2014 mural in the Markets area of south Belfast celebrating the achievements of local boy George McMullen, who played youth football for St. Malachy’s and St. Matthew’s before joining Cliftonville in 2011 age 20.
On the left is the familiar Cliftonville huddle (see previously: The Red Army). The two poses in the centre and on the left are reproductions of Belfast Telegraph images. The first is from Cliftonville’s 2013 Dankse Bank Irish League-clinching win over Linfield, which the Reds won with a McMullen penalty in the dying seconds; the second in from the same moment in the 2014 campaign: Chris Curran has just scored to put the Reds two-nil up in a game against Portadown that would win them the League for the second year in succession.
Other Cliftonville players have been featured in murals: Joe The Goal in Ardyone and Rory Donnelly in the Bone.
“Free Palestine”. Tears of blood flow from a face that is shrouded by a Palestinian flag and behind barbed wire. The writing at the bottom is a quote from Malcolm X: “If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the oppressed and loving the oppressor.”
Lower Stanfield St, Markets, south Belfast. Almost a decade old – this mural was launched 2014-07-29.
Paddy Duffy Collection 