printed board/placard – Page 38 – Paddy Duffy Collection

The Sacrifice Remains The Same

2022-12-282025-06-21Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

“Time changes! But the sacrifice remains the same.” The board shows, in black and white, a WWI soldier, who is comforting another solider, in modern gear and in colour. The emblems of the 36th (Ulster) division and Royal Irish Rifles are also shown. Sponsored by the EU and the Cosy Somme Association. This is a repainted version of the original (late 2013) board which had faded badly.

The same board, at smaller scale, can also be found on Whitehead Orange hall.

Ogilvie Street, east Belfast

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Copyright © 2022 Paddy Duffy
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Bang Up To Date

2022-12-282024-08-26Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

The previous UVF mural in Carrington Street (Volunteering | On Your Side) was paint-bombed in October, 2020, (Keep It Local) but was quickly replaced by this computer-generated board showing the Harland & Wolff cranes, a Long Kesh watch-tower, and a hooded gunman from the UVF’s East Belfast Battalion.

Carrington Street, east Belfast

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The Glorious Dead

2022-12-182024-08-16Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

Four of the 700 NHS staff in the UK to die of Covid during the pandemic have come Northern Ireland, the most recent being dementia specialist Alan Henry in Antrim hospital (Express | BelTel | iTV). In the south, Defence Forces have been deployed to three nursing homes while 6,400 health workers are off sick (Irish Times). The mural above shows a masked nurse and doctor among a field of poppies. It has been added below the three painted boards commemorating Titanic, the Somme, and the WWII Blitz.

On the exterior of the Connswater Community Centre, east Belfast

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The Shipyard

2022-12-182024-08-17Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

The 36th (Ulster) Division Memorial Association (Fb) put on a play called From The Shipyard To The Somme (Fb | watch on youtube) in Connswater Community Centre in 2013. It follows a group of men from east Belfast who joined the Ulster Volunteers in Belfast but are now training at Abercorn barracks in Ballykinlar (later an internment camp) as members of the 36th Division, before going to the Battle Of The Somme in France.

Belfast – with one tenth of the population – provided about a third of the Irish soldier to participate in WWI. In the shipyards, Harland & Wolff responded to the slow-down in production not by putting everyone on short time but by letting go of employees, particularly unskilled employees, for whom the wages of soldiering were competitive (particularly if married), while skilled men were reclassified as “munitions workers” needed to fulfill war contracts (History Ireland | Long Kesh Inside Out).

Connswater Street, east Belfast

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ONH

2022-12-182024-08-11Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

As can seen above, there were originally three framed republican boards here but the Cogús (POWs) one has gone entirely and the other two – Belfast Brigade ONH, 1981 hunger strikers – are in bad shape.

Duncairn Parade, New Lodge, north Belfast.

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Copyright © 2024 Paddy Duffy
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Old Carrick Hill

2022-12-092024-08-24Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

The collection of images showing “Carrick Hill in the old days” now includes a mural, of two women talking in the street.

In addition to the mural, there are four boards, two on either side: Carrick Hill playground; Regent Street party; Pepper Hill steps, 1894; Carrick Hill 1940s.

There are eleven more boards in Regent Street. (Later increased to fifteen with the addition of 1976 Mandiville dart team; Mary McCusker & Kitty Spotwoods; Maggie Jane Largey & Mary Ann Largey; Richard & Alan Crean – see The Tea Bar for all fifteen.)

The board in the image below (from Stanhope Street) shows Pepper Hill Steps before the turn of the twentieth century. The steps used to lead from Mustard Street (which was what Library Street used to be) towards Upper Library Street (now Carrick Hill, the street).

Stanhope Street, Belfast

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100 Years

2022-12-082024-08-10Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

On the left of this memorial board in Carrickfergus are five portraits from the later life of the child who began life in Greece as Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark. The family was exiled during the Greco-Turkish War. He ended up in Britain where he later joined the navy and stopped using his titles when he became the British subject, Philip Mountbatten. When he married Elizabeth he became Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. His life-time matches that of the Northern Irish state (see in the second image): he was born a month after its creation and died in 2021 at the age of 99, a month shy of its centenary.

These boards and banners are in Albert Road and Thomas Street, Carrickfergus, near the Orange lodge, (for which see On Foreign Fields). They are perhaps all sponsored by the Ulster Grenadiers flute band. “Carrickfergus says “No” to Irish Sea border”

Comply With Your Country’s Demand

2022-12-082025-07-14Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

The new panels shown here re-re-image the side-wall of the mural on the left (see For Valour), which was dedicated to the Royal Irish Rifles of the Great War. We now see hooded UVF gunmen from the 1st East Antrim battalion, and an interesting quote from Edward Carson.

In September, 1914, six weeks after the Great War had begun, Edward Carson wrote to the Ulster Volunteers entreating “those who have not already responded” to “my call for Defenders of the Empire” to “enlist at once for the Ulster Division in Lord Kitchener’s Army”, fighting alongside “our fellow Britishers”: “Quit yourselves like men and comply with your country’s demand”. The impulse for the display of force shown here is the other, original, motivation for the paramilitary force, which Carson describes as “to defend our citizenship in the United Kingdom” (Strachan & Nally).

The Larches, Carrickfergus

The Present Conflict

2022-12-082024-12-07Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

“Greenisland 3rd Battalion, South-East Antrim Brigade [UDA]. This memorial is dedicated to the memory of the officers and members of our organisation who were murdered by the enemies of Ulster and to those who paid the extreme sacrifice whilst on active service during the present conflict. Quis separabit. UFF. UDA, LPA”

At the shops in Glassillan Court, Greenisland.

Maintain The Union

2022-12-082024-08-10Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

“Loyalist Woodburn celebrates 100th anniversary Northern Ireland”. Maintain the union of (left to right) England (St George’s Cross), Wales (The Red Dragon), Northern Ireland (Ulster Banner), Scotland (St Andrew’s Saltire). Along the fence we have the NI coat of arms and Captain Sir Tom Moore.

Sandes Ct, Carrickfergus