“Sergeant 14/17063 Thomas George Wortley ‘D’ Company 14th Battalion Royal Irish Rifles (Young Citizen Volunteers). Killed in action 7th June 1917 Battle of Messines. Buried C.10 Spanbroekmolen British Cemetery.”
Wortley was born in Carrickfergus and lived in Belfast. He (and James Sharpe, also from Carrick) was killed on the first day of the battle at Messines (findagrave) and buried in a small cemetery of British soldiers, many from the 36th (Ulster) Division, in Spanbroekmolen on the Ypres Salient in Flanders (WP) – shown in the mural. He is remembered in Carrickfergus with a parade each year on the date of his death (carrickfergusrollofhonour).
The medals in the top left are Pip, Squeak, and Wilfred (that is, the 1914 Star, for service in France or Belgium, the War (service) medal, and the Inter Allied Victory medal) (Identify Medals). The ‘Dead Man’s Penny’ memorial plaque (WP) appears next to the gravestones.
The UVF mural overlooking the entrance to Mount Vernon has been repainted after Storm Darragh back in December (2024) knocked down part of the wall it was painted on (see Taken By Storm) and the remainder of the wall was subsequently knocked down (see Prepared For Space, Ready For Wall).
There were local voices against the repainting of the mural (Sunday World) but after the wall (which is owned by the Housing Executive) was rebuilt, scaffolding went up at the end of March (BelTel) and painting began in June.
The mural will be officially launched at the Twelfth celebrations. The repainting has been criticised by the father of one UVF victim (BelTel). One (very) small mercy is that neither of the gunmen – from the North Belfast UVF – is directly confronting the viewer (including the drivers coming off the M2 at Fortwilliam.
Images of the completed mural are from June 26th; the in-progress images are as dated below.
This is a series of ten boards in Craigyhill, Larne about WWII. (It replaces a set of twelve UDA boards – see The Loyalist Executioner.)
From left to right (top to bottom) their subjects are: the Ulster Defence Volunteers/Ulster Home Guard, formed from the B Specials; Paddy the pigeon; submarine HMS Thrasher (using an image from the Seosamh Mac Coılle collection); HMS Larne, a minesweeper built in Renfrew, Scotland; the port of Larne through which passed “over 5 million people and Allied forces”; Kilwaughter Castle, a training ground for UK and American troops; the royal visit of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in June 1942; James Stuart Steele of Ballycarry, who served in both WWI and WWII; the Larne Spitfire, one of seventeen spitfires funded by a Belfast Telegraph fund-raising drive (Wartime NI | see also the Ballymena spitfire in Per Ardua Ad Astra); local casualties of WWII – “In remembrance of those from town of Larne that paid the supreme sacrifice during the Second World War”.
The quick turnover of street art on Queen’s Parade, Bangor, (including the Project 24 space) continues. Here is a gallery of recent work from Cha Cha (ig), Keyto (ig) (three frogs, one in a Dan-Kitchener-style background, and one riding a shark), Ana Fish (web), and TMN crew.
Charles Thomson was born in Maghera in 1729 and moved to North America in 1739. He served as the secretary of the Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence. He helped design both the front and back of the nation’s Great Seal in 1782. (WP)
He is honoured in his home town by the board shown here. Thomson’s design for the reverse of the seal – the all-seeing eye over an unfinished pyramid (WP) – appears in the eagle’s left-hand wing, and his preliminary sketch, with wing-tips pointed downward (WP), in the right-hand wing.
Text of the information panel: “The Final Design of the Great Seal – June 20, 1782. On June 13, 1782, Congress asked Charles Thomson to come up with a suitable design for America’s Great Seal. With the reports and drawings of the three committees before him, he set to work. Thomson had served the past eight years as the Secretary of the Continental Congress where he acquired a reputation for fairness, truth, and integrity. Well-versed in the classics, he was once a Latin master the Academy of Philadelphia. Although today he is not a well-known founder, Charles Thomson was at the heart of the American Revolution. Thomson incorporated symbolic elements from all three committees with ideas of his own to create a bold and elegant design. He made a sketch and wrote a description of his preliminary design. For the front of the Great Seal, Thomson drew an American bald eagle and for the centrepiece he a [sic] placed the shield upon the eagle’s breast. Thomson envisioned an eagle “on the wing and rising.” In the eagle’s right talon is an olive branch. In its left, a tightly drawn bundle of arrows. Thomson said these symbols represent “the power of peace and war.” In the eagle’s beak, he placed a scroll with the first committee’s motto: E Pluribus Unum ‘Out of Many, One’. For the crest above the eagle’s head, Thomson used the radiant constellation of thirteen stars suggested by the second committee. He described the light rays as “breaking through a cloud.” For the reverse side of the Great Seal, Thomson used Barton’s (third committee) suggestion: an unfinished pyramid with the eye of Providence in its zenith, but added a triangle around the eye (like the first committee did). He also created two new mottos: Novus Ordo Seclorum ‘A New Order of the Ages’ and Annuit Coeptis ‘Providence has Favoured Our Undertakings’. After consulting with William Baron, the position of the eagle was changed to “displayed” (wings spread with tips up) and the chevrons on the shield were changed to the vertical stripes we see today.”
A statue to Winifred Carney was unveiled, along with another to Mary Ann McCracken, in the grounds of Belfast City Hall on Friday, March 8th (BCC). At her left hand is a typewriter. Carney was a qualified secretary and typist, and became secretary of the Irish Textile Workers’ Union in 1912, in which position she met James Connolly, who was secretary of the Belfast branch of the ITGWU. The 1913 manifesto addressed ‘To The Linen Slaves Of Belfast’ (marxists.org), exhorting “our toiling sisters” in the mills to join the organisation, was signed by Carney, Connolly, and Ellen Gordon.
Her uniform, and the amorphous pistol (or holster?) in her right hand, refer to her membership of Cumann Na mBan and participation in the Easter Rising of 1916. Carney was in the GPO when it was taken over and was among those who surrendered at the end; during the occupation she typed up dispatches from the Moore Street headquarters. A News Letter editorial described the statue as smuggling terrorists onto the grounds of city hall.
“Winifred Carney, born in Bangor, was a suffragist and a committed trade unionist. She was an organiser in the Irish Textile Workers’ Union and became James Connolly’s personal secretary, political confidante and friend. In 1913, She and Connolly wrote the Irish Textile Workers’ Union manifesto entitled ‘To the Linen Slaves of Belfast’. It was a time when Belfast workers, mostly women and children, were working long hours in horrific conditions, barefoot and hungry. “D’oıbrıgh Winnie ar son oıbrıthe Bhéal Feırste, go háırıthe ar son na mban agus na bpáıstí a bhíodh ag obaır sna muılte ar fud na cathrach. “Many Belfast mills are slaughterhouses for the women and penitentiaries for the children.” Chomh maıth leıs an obaır a rınne sí ar son na gceardchumann, ba Phoblachtánach í Winnie a bhí ına ball de Chumann na mBan agus d’Arm Cathartha na hÉıreann. As an officer in the Irish Citizen Army, Winnie was present with Connolly in the Dublin General Post Office during the 1916 Easter Rising and has since become known as ‘the typist with the Webley’. Carney stood as a Sınn Féın candidate in the 1918 elections, but in an ‘unwinnable’ seat. She retained her commitment to socialism and in 1924, Winifred joined the Northern Ireland Labour Party. Here she met her future husband, George McBride, like her a committed socialist. George was a Protestant from Shankill Road who fought at The Battle of the Somme with the 36th (Ulster) Division. Tá Winnie curtha ı Reılıg Bhaıle an Mhuılınn ar Bhóthar na bhFál ın ıarthar Bhéal Feırste.”
Here is a selection of art from the Cupar Way section of the west Belfast “peace” line. Some of the artists were visitors who were in town for Hit The North 2025 (Roo, Philth, Sky High – all of which were immediately blacked out). We also see work by Ohhi Ohno, SNAK, NOTA, KAYOS, Junk Graff, and others.
These are images of a new concrete relief-work in progress on the Cupar Way “peace” line (war wall) at the North Howard Street gates. The creator is Debbie Hutchings, a member of the New Life City church (Fb) (Belfast Media); the piece is on top of the ‘repent’ version of the New Life mural, and it contains a scriptural quote John 3:16: “For God so loved the world He gave His only begotton [begotten] son so that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
There is video of Hutchings at work in this Irish News video on Fb and at the BelTel. Work began at the beginning of April and the piece is perhaps still unfinished – see the incomplete text of John 3:8 in the third image: “The wind blows as it chooses, you can hear it’s [its] sound but you do not know where it came from or where it is going; so it is with the hearts of those born of the spirit”.
Work by English artist My Dog Sighs (web) in Talbot Street for Hit The North 2025 (Seedhead Arts), with a Belfast-specific reflection, including the Albert Clock and the gantry cranes Samson & Goliath; the child with an ice-cream is three-year-old Teddy, son of street artist Codo (ig).
My Dog Sighs also painted a smaller eye, reflecting the Sunflower Bar, in Kent St.
There is a small bonus piece featuring two “Quiet Little Voices” on a shutter to the left of the main piece.
Paddy Duffy Collection 