Irish Holiday Part 7 - Derry/Londonderry

 Arthur and I took the train from Belfast to Derry/Londonderry for a one-day walkabout.  Both names are used, and I will change back and forth between the two in this post.  We crossed the Peace Bridge which is a short walk from the train station along the River Foyle.

Our first stop on the city side of the river was the Guildhall, which is a sort of City Hall for Derry.  It has an interesting history, dating back to when London trade guilds took a lead role in founding Londonderry in the seventeenth century.  The stained glass and dark wood embellishments, plus the giant organ, all combine to make the Guildhall look like an Anglican church or cathedral.  If you can enlarge this photo, you may see that the lower right window has a Canada theme!

The Guildhall is outside the city walls.  Our first stop inside the wall was the tower museum.  It is currently going through a reorganisation, but we enjoyed the presentation on Derry Girls, a three-season sitcom about high school girls growing up in Derry at the tail end of the Troubles in the 1990s.  We watched the show before our trip, so it was fun to see the presentation.  Curiously, as we wandered in, there was a fairly large group of extremely well dressed visitors, including some who gave off a clear plain-clothes police/bodyguard vibe.  Turns out that we were visiting at the same time as the UK's Secretary of State for Northern Ireland!

After spending time with the Derry Girls, we next did a circuit of the Derry City Walls.  These are the only existing complete city walls remaining in Ireland, dating back to the seventeenth century.  The old city of Londonderry was unsuccessfully besieged a few times in its history, and is a major focus for the Orange Order, the primary Loyalist organisation.

A view inside the walled city.

The Irish love their murals, so naturally the Derry Girls have one of their own!

I have lots of photos of Nationalist murals, but the Loyalists have their own, too. 

On the west side, there is development right up to the city walls, but on the east, facing the traditional Catholic area of Bogside, the ground is clear.

Artwork showing the history of the Gaelic name Doire, from which Derry is derived.

At the entrance to Bogside, this is the famous Free Derry Corner, a focus of confrontations between Nationalists and the British Army during the Troubles.  This monument gets repainted frequently, but this is how it looked on our visit.  

More murals in Bogside.

Hands across the divide sculpture promoting reconciliation and an end to the Troubles.

Another busy cat on the prowl.

After our visit to both Nationalist and Unionist museums providing diverse views of Derry/Londonderry history, we headed back to the train station over the double-decker Craigavon Bridge. 

Alas, we did not have time to visit Letterkenny!

ADRIC

 No, not the most hated Companion in the Whoniverse!  These are members of the Auxiliary Division of the Royal Irish Constabulary, originally sculpted by Paul Hicks for the now-defunct Musketeer Miniatures.  I bought these figures from Footsore Miniatures but the website has a notice that the range will be moving on and will soon no longer be available.  I hope someone else carries them soon, they are too good to lose!

The British response to the Irish Republican Army's guerilla campaign showed a preference to treating it as a police matter.  While the British Army and Royal Navy were at the fore in the response to the 1916 Easter Rising, the feeling was that a military response would give the IRA an elevated status, while assigning the police to confront them would give the IRA a status as criminals.  One of the problems with this decision was that the IRA started to deliberately target constables of the RIC, which in turn led to many Irish members of the RIC to resign.  This meant that the RIC was understrength when demands on the service were increasing.

The Royal Irish Constabulary was the primary police service in Ireland, dating back to its founding in the early 19th Century, primarily staffed by men born in Ireland.   As the numbers of Irishmen in its ranks dwindled, in 1919 the RIC turned to British Army veterans of the Great War to make up the numbers. The surge of recruits caused a minor crisis as there were not enough of the dark green, almost black, RIC uniforms, so many recruits ended up mixing items of RIC uniform with British Army khaki.   This led to the new recruits getting the nickname 'Black and Tans', and they were very unpopular with the average Irish people, both as outsiders and as a result of their reputation for brutality and incompetence.

The Auxiliary Division of the Royal Irish Constabulary, aka ADRIC or the Auxies, were a specialised force that was formed specifically as an elite counterinsurgency force, recruited specifically from former commissioned officers of the British Army.  Folks sometimes assign them the Black and Tans nickname, so there can be confusion if B&T means the Auxies or the ordinary RIC "surge" constables.

The Auxies had a reputation for indiscipline, and were also known for a mix and match approach to uniforms.  Their main distinguishing feature was their black or dark green Balmoral bonnet.  Because of this, I've painted them in a mix of khaki and black-green tunics and trousers.  The Balmorals typically had a coloured patch behind the cap badge, with colour varying depending on the company.  I haven't been able to establish which coloured flash was used by each company, so I chose red because I like the way it looks!

Here are a group of Auxies armed with rifles and revolvers.

The Auxie on the right, holding a shotgun, is based on a photo, and demonstrates the relaxed approach to uniforms in ADRIC.

These two, the Lewis gunner and loader, I painted in their old Army khaki uniforms.

Irish Holiday Part 6 - Belfast Day 1

 After our sojourn in Cork, we boarded the train at Kent Station and headed to Belfast, changing trains at Dublin - which included a ride across Dublin on the LUAS tram from Heuston Station to Connolly Station.  Although we had diligently obtained our UK ETAs (Electronic Travel Authorisation) for our passports, we were never asked for them at any time during our visit to Northern Ireland.  A warning to anyone planning travel to the UK - there are several scam website out there that advertise UK ETA.  I was taken in by one of them, and was only saved by my bank refusing to process a credit card payment.  Make sure you get your ETA from www.gov.uk/eta website.  If in doubt, ask for help!

We started our visit with a walking tour of the city centre.  I was a bit surprised to find out that Belfast really started to develop as a city in the second half of the nineteenth century, so much of the city centre architecture looked familiar as it is of a similar to style to what we would call 'heritage' buildings in Calgary or Vancouver's city centres!  

We stopped by the Visit Belfast Tourism Office opposite the Belfast City Hall, and they suggested we start our tour of Belfast with a visit to the completely free 360-degree view of the city at Victoria Square shopping centre!

The Big Fish has become one of the symbols of the city!  

Next up, our third prison tour!  Across the street from the burnt-out Crumlin Road Courthouse, we found the Crumlin Road Gaol.  

The courthouse was not open for tours, but inside the Gaol, we saw the tunnel that allowed prisoners to be transferred underneath Crumlin Road between the two facilities.

The layout of the prison matched the approach we saw at Kilmainham and Cork City Gaols, with the difference that Crumlin Road Gaol remained an active prison up to the 1990s, while the other two had closed in the 1920s, so overall it felt a bit more modern.  

Crumlin Road Gaol has some terrific interactive displays, providing good detail on the lives of prisoners and guards in different eras of the gaol, including a very sobering presentation on capital punishment.

Naturally, as the prison was active through the 1990s, there is quite a lot of information about the Troubles.  The prison yard included these examples of armoured vehicles used by the British Army during the Troubles.

I was curious to see a maple leaf on this truck, but I did not discover the story behind it.

Wessex helicopter, a frequent sight in the skies over Belfast during the Troubles.

After Crumlin Road, we wandered along Shankill Road, at the heart of Loyalist Belfast (Loyalists are so-called as they are loyal to the British Crown).  Loads of commemorations of Loyalist history, with a significant emphasis on the Battle of the Somme.

Lots of flags and many arches like this one, featuring imagery celebrating their loyalty to the Crown.

A short distance from Shankill Road, we found the Peace Wall on Cupar Way that separates Unionist and Nationalist neighbourhoods. It's quite the sight, heavily decorated with loads of murals and graffiti.

Great sentiment from the Dalai Lama!

These gates are closed every night to restrict direct movement between the two neighbourhoods.  They were open for us, though, so we passed on to the Nationalist neighbourhood around Falls Road.

One of the first sights on Falls Road was this big mural of Bobby Sands.

Nationalist areas favour murals, in contrast to the proliferation of flags in the Loyalist areas.  There are also memorials to victims of the conflict.

The Nationalists have embraced the Palestinian cause, and by contrast there are Israeli flags in the Loyalist areas.

On the way back to our hotel, we found a tribute to the late Queen Elizabeth.