Palestinian flags fly around the 1916 Easter Rising centenary board in Taghnevan Drive, Lurgan, seen previously in 2024.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2025 Paddy Duffy
T08024
North Armagh Remembers Palestine
Lurgan
The Drumbeg Omniplex
These are images of the sub-station at the green in the middle of Drumbeg. Above are children bearing messages of “happiness” and peace (a second trio of children on the right-hand side of the image above has been blotted out by a large pink splotch). The plaque in the top right reads, “A Shared Space & Services Re-Imaging Project supported by the European Union’s Peace IV Programme”.
On the other walls are a goal with points for hitting different spots, the “Drumbeg Omniplex” with “movie coming soon”, and two pairs of Irish dancers on either side of a reflective panel that has now disappeared.
Drumbeg, Lurgan
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2025 Paddy Duffy
T08035 T08034 T08036 T08037 T08038 T08039
I Owe My Allegiance To The Working Class
“I owe my allegiance [here “allegience”] to the working class” is a phrase associated with Seamus Costello (b. 1939), who fought for the IRA during the Border Campaign and was interned in the Curragh for two years. He stayed with the Officials during the split, but was driven out in 1974 and formed the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) and the INLA. He was shot in 1977 (WP). Nora Connolly, at Costello’s funeral, said, “He was the only one who truly understood what James Connolly meant when he spoke of his vision of the freedom of the Irish people.”
Drumbeg, Lurgan
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2025 Paddy Duffy
T08042 T08043 T08044
The World Has Abandoned Palestinians
The QR code included in this display of solidarity with Palestine takes one to a post from December 2024 on the instagram page of the BDS Movement, asking people to boycott various firms “for their complicity in Israel’s occupation, apartheid and genocide”.
North Street, Lurgan
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2025 Paddy Duffy
T08023 T08022
Ka-Boom
“Ka-boom” from an RPG slamming into the side of the post office in Kilwilkie, Lurgan. The piece was seen in 2015 (Peter Moloney Collection) but it showing minimal signs of aging.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2025 Paddy Duffy
T08011 T08012
Continuity, Not Compromise
The CIRA (Continuity IRA) is the military wing of Republican Sınn Féın (RSF web), which split from Provisional Sınn Féın in 1986, though the military campaign did not begin until the Provisional IRA ceasefire in 1994. Like all of the various IRAs, the CIRA claims to be continuing the fight for (all-island) Irish freedom begun with the 1916 Easter Rising – the board (above) commemorates the centenary of the Rising.
To the left is a slightly newer RSF board: “Stop the extradition of Liam Campbell now – don’t hand him over, don’t play England’s game”. Campbell was extradited from the Republic to Lithuania in 2022 (BBC) but was returned to Ireland later the same year when a court ruled the statute of limitations has expired (RN).
The CIRA’s armed campaign is represented by the hooded gunman in the ‘warning sign’ below.
Also included (last below) is a small IRSP (web) stencil.
The pieces are in the adjacent Meadowbrook and Drumbeg areas of Lurgan.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2025 Paddy Duffy
T08028 T08027 T08040 T08041
Meadowbrook Community
These paintings are in the Meadowbrook estate in Tullygally, Lurgan, painted by local children with support from Drumgor Detached Youth Work Project (DDYWP) (ig) (Community Facebook page).
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2025 Paddy Duffy
T08032 T08033
T08031 T08030 T08029 T08026 T08025
Ulster’s Brave Young Men
The background to the Avenue Road “Memorial to the 36th (Ulster) Division and to other men of Ulster who served in the Great War 1914 – 1918” has been repainted in the purple and orange of the UVF and the wall simplified by the removal of two smaller boards to each side of the main board (above) which shows soldiers looking out over the edge of a WWI trench. (For the the previous boards, see the Peter Moloney Collection.)
The seat is dedicated to “Jack”, an 11-year-old member of the Avenue Road Memorial flute band who died in 2019 (News Letter), with boxing gloves and emblem of the NI soccer association. 2 Timothy 4:7 says, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”
Avenue Road, Lurgan
The final image is of a board in nearby King’s Park Mews to a soldier who died on “the homefront” – Dublin during the 1916 Rising – Second Lieutenant James Howard Calvert of the 6th Royal Irish Rifles. Calvert lived at 41 Avenue Road, Lurgan.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2025 Paddy Duffy
T07790 T07791 T07792 T07789
T07793
Our Only Crime Is Loyalty
These are the boards at the chip shop (formerly a Spar and before that a Mace) in the centre of the Mourneview estate, Lurgan.
Above, and in detail below, are the pieces from the front of the shop, in Pollock Drive. Anti-clockwise from bottom-left:
First: “Believe, we dare not boast,/Believe, we do not fear/We stand to pay the cost,/In all that men hold dear.//What answer from the North?/One Law, one Land, one Throne/If England drive us forth,/We shall not fall alone!” Kipling’s poem Ulster.
The first stanza also appears in a Belfast RHC mural, and other lines from the poem have been used elsewhere: We Perish If We Yield | The Terror, Threats, And Dread.
Second: YCV
Next (tall piece): A company, 1st battalion, Mid Ulster brigade UVF – Lurgan as well as Broxburn (outside Edinburgh) and Thornliebank (near Glasgow).
Next: PAF plus (out of frame in the wide shot) “When injustice becomes law resistance becomes duty.” The same panel was seen in Ballyclare, though for the 1st East Antrim battalion rather than the Mid Ulster brigade.
Above: A tribute to the Ulster Volunteers from the area: the 9th battalion Royal Irish Fusiliers joined the 108th brigade in the 36th (Ulster) Division; the 5th battalion joined the 31st brigade and the 10th (Irish) Division. This board goes back to (at least) 2011.
Finally (top left), a UDU/UDA board, to 1 company, D battalion, South Belfast. All of the remaining pieces are UVF/PAF.
Around the corner, in Mourne Road, a gallery of photographs of the Craigavon Protestant Boys (Fb) past and present, with a plaque in memory of Victor Stewart. “Our only crime is loyalty.”
In the adjacent Spelga Park: “Unbowed & unbroken – our only crime is loyalty – Mourneview/Gret estate bonfire” with an unusual combination of shamrock and Orange lily.
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2024 Paddy Duffy
T05400
T05393 T05394 T05395 T05396 T05397 T05398 T05399 T05402 T05403 T05404
T05401
Ard Mhacha Abú
The people of Kilwilkie (Lurgan) supported the Armagh team in their (successful – RTÉ video) bid to win the All-Ireland senior football championship, repeating their former and only previous win in 2002 – see also Ard Mhacha (in north Belfast) and Ádh Mór Ard Mhacha (in Armagh) and (from last year) The Core Of Armagh.
Levin Road, Lurgan
Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2024 Paddy Duffy
T05409
Paddy Duffy Collection 