London-/Derry – Page 6 – Paddy Duffy Collection

The Factory Girls

2024-08-042024-11-07Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

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.

Derry Of The Past has a gallery of historical images.

The murals are in the courtyard of the Craft Village in Shipquay Street; they were designed by Joe Campbell and painted by UVArts (web).

(BBC | BBC | DEPOT | BelTel)

The Menin Gate

2024-08-042025-06-22Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

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.

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Welcome To The Brandywell

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“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”.

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The Cost Of War

2024-08-042024-10-30Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

From the info plaque (shown last below): “This mural depicts three plinths which stand in the Island Of Ireland Peace Park in the city of Messen [Mesen]/Messines in Belgium. Each plinth represents the number of casualties for each division which was raised on the island of Ireland during the 1st World War. A total of 69,947 soldiers from the island of Ireland were either killed, wounded or reported missing during the four years which the war lasted. The price of freedom.”

The numbers given are: 36th (Ulster) division, 32,186; 16th (Irish) division, 28,398; 10th (Irish) division, 9,363.

The Peace Park is also featured in another mural in the car-park – see The Spirit Of Brotherhood.

Ebrington Centre car park, Waterside, Londonderry

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We Are The Dead

2024-08-042024-10-30Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

This mural at the Ebrington Centre in the Waterside, Londonderry, commemorates the WWI dead and wounded from the entire island of Ireland.

The 10th (Irish) Division fought only briefly “in Flanders fields”, towards the very end of the war, having spent most of its time in Gallipoli (in the Ottoman Empire), Macedonia, Egypt, and Palestine. The 16th took part in the Somme, especially at “Guinchy” [Ginchy] and Guillemont, while the 36th were deployed on the first day (the Battle Of Albert).

The poem in the middle is the first half of John McCrae’s In Flanders Fields: “In Flanders fields the poppies blow/Between the crosses, row on row/That mark our place, and in the sky/The larks, still bravely singing, fly/Scarce heard amid the guns below.//We are the dead; short days ago/We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow/Loved and were loved, and now we lie/In Flanders fields.”

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Some May Be From Showing Up, Others Are From Growing Up

2024-08-042025-01-09Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

These roses – in the teeth of skulls and in the hair of lost loves – are by Peaball (web) at the Tattoo Lounge (ig) in Derry.

The Changing Leaves

2024-08-042025-02-13Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

This leafy – but fading – street art on the upper facade of the Brickwork bar in Magazine Street, Derry, dates back to 2018.

Painted by UVArts (web).

Cuımhníonn Doıre

2024-08-032024-11-07Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

For many years there were portraits of the hunger strikers (either the 10 deceased from 1981 or the 12 from the 70s and 80s) along the long wall in Bishop St Without – see 2009, 2004, and 1998 (before that time the wall was divided into a number of panels for a variety of republican imagery – see 1984 and 1982) but in the portraits – which were on boards – soon started coming off and over the next decade the wall began to fade and become covered in graffiti (as can be seen in Street View). For the 40th anniversary, the deceased hunger strikers were restored to the wall, as shown here. From the info board (to the left of Sands’s head): “Cuımhníonn Doıre: 40th anniversary of the 1980-1981 hunger strikes. Rededication of mural, by the Bogside and Brandywell Monument Committee.”