“Catalonia & Ireland – Saoırse • Llibertat”, “Catalonia – 300 years of occupation, of resistance.”
Centralised Spanish rule dates back to the Nueva Planta decrees (WP) made by Philip V (who is shown upside-down in the first zero) between 1707 and 1716. These formed a single Spanish nation and citizenry and ended various regional identities including Catalonian.
Fahan Street, Derry
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Copyright © 2007 Paddy Duffy
T00382 [T00414]
The hunger strikers memorial in Rossville Street, Derry, was launched in 2000. Compared to the entries from 2001 and 2004, this version has a new centre-piece – the metal lark has been replaced by a combination lark and hand cast in stone.
The central “H” carries the names of the ten deceased 1981 strikers, while the stones to either side carry the names of other republicans to have died on hunger strike: Thomas Ashe 1917, Michael Fitzgerald 1920, Joseph Murphy 1920, Terence McSwiney 1920, Joseph Whitty 1923, Denis Barry 1923, Andrew Sullivan 1923, Tony D’Aroy 1940, Jack McNeela 1940, Sean McCaughey 1946, Michael Gaughan 1974, Frank Stagg 1976.
In the background of the image below are (left) Free Derry Corner and (centre-right) The Petrol Bomber.
Rossville Street, Derry
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Copyright © 2007 Paddy Duffy
T00378 T00411
Since 2004, this size and style of lettering has been used on Free Derry Corner. The wall is sometimes painted in other colours and other designs. For a history, see the Visual History page for the front of the wall; there is also a page for the rear.
In the background, to the right, is The Petrol Bomber.
Lecky Road, Derry
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Copyright © 2007 Paddy Duffy
T00412
The Petrol Bomber was first painted by the Bogside Artists in 1994 and modified a number of times in the first few years, to change the badge to “No RUC” and to a green ribbon.
Part of The People’s Gallery (Visual History) along Lecky Road and Rossville Street in Derry’s Bogside.
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Copyright © 2007 Paddy Duffy
T00376
“Years from now they will ask you where you were when your comrades were dying on hungerstrike. Shall you say you were with us or shall you say that you were conforming to the very system that drove us to our deaths[?]” INLA (sign the light-pole as well as the flags and red star in the mural) volunteer Patsy O’Hara, from Derry, joined the hunger strike on the same day as Raymond McCreesh (March 22nd) and died, 61 days later, later in the same day (May 21st, 11:29 p.m.) as him (2:11 a.m.).
Lecky Rd, Derry
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Copyright © 2007 Paddy Duffy
T00420
A Christian cross is added to the Bloody Sunday memorial mural in Westland Street, Derry. A version without a cross was seen previously in 1999 and 2004. (The latter gives the names of the victims.) There is an oak leaf – symbol of Derry – for each of the fourteen victims.
Westland Street, Derry
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Copyright © 2007 Paddy Duffy
T00373 [T00407]
A lark (rather than a dove) bursts through the ceiling of a H-Block cell lined with the names of the ten deceased 1981 hunger strikers. “This mural is dedicated to all those who tragically died on the streets of Derry during the hunger strike era. Suımhneas Dé dá nanamacha. 3rd October 2006.”
Westland St, Derry
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Copyright © 2007 Paddy Duffy
T00404
These paintings are on boards on the wall around the Cathedral Youth Club in the Fountain.
Above are two boards (on the side) showing the Apprentice Boys crying “No surrender!” and the breaking of the boom that ended the siege. A 2007 entry in the Peter Moloney Collection shows three additional panels to the right, also relating to Londonderry.
Below are two wall-paintings (on the front), of the Thiepval Memorial and the Ulster Tower. The image of the wall to the left in the Peter Moloney Collection does not include these two panels but rather the outline of the words “At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them”.
The Fountain, Londonderry
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Copyright © 2007 Paddy Duffy
T00460 T00461
“‘My forefathers were … the men who had followed Cromwell and who shared in the defence of Derry, and in the victories of Aughrim and the Boyne.’ – President Theodore Roosevelt, 20th US president, 1901-1904.” The “shutting of the gates” of Derry is represented in the bottom left.
The quote is derived from Volume 1, Chapter 5, of Roosevelt’s The Winning Of The West (available at Project Gutenberg). Roosevelt, however, is describing the forefathers of the Scotch-Irish, rather than his own forefathers, who, as the name suggests, were Dutch.
He writes, “The Presbyterian Irish were themselves already a mixed people. Though mainly descended from Scotch ancestors—who came originally from both lowlands and highlands, from among both the Scotch Saxons and the Scotch Celts—many of them were of English, a few of French Huguenot, and quite a number of true old Milesian Irish extraction. They were the Protestants of the Protestants; they detested and despised the Catholics, whom their ancestors had conquered, and regarded the Episcopalians by whom they themselves had been oppressed, with a more sullen, but scarcely less intense, hatred. They were a truculent and obstinate people, and gloried in the warlike renown of their forefathers, the men who had followed Cromwell, and who had shared in the defence of Derry and in the victories of the Boyne and Aughrim.”
Some sources claim that an ancestor(s) on his mother’s side emigrated from Gleno, Co Antrim in 1729, but this seems to be her great-great-grandfather James, who was a Scot (WP) and appears to have emigrated directly from Scotland, specifically Baldernock, in 1728 or 1729 (WikiTree | Friends Of Bulloch). The search for a connection continues, according to Irish Central.
This mural is one (and perhaps the first to be painted) in the series “From pioneers to presidents”. For more such murals, see the Visual History page about Ulster-Scots murals.
Replaces the King Billy mural in Wapping Lane, the Fountain, Londonderry.
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Copyright © 2007 Paddy Duffy
T00439
This board on the back of Free Derry Corner (Visual History) commemorates the thirtieth anniversary of the second hunger strike and the ten strikers who died.
Lecky Road, Derry
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Copyright © 2001 Paddy Duffy
T00788
Paddy Duffy Collection 