About
The so-called International Wall on Divis Street continues up Northumberland Street and around into Beverley Street where it is finally interrupted by a gate into the plant; the main gate is on Percy Street, to the east. The Northumberland Street wall is, at 212m compared to 68m, almost three times as long as the Divis Street wall.
The murals are constantly updated on a regular basis, meaning the context of the wall is always changing.
Northumberland Street runs between Divis Street and Shankill Road, one of several streets connecting republican and loyalist areas in west Belfast. Before the Troubles, there were many more such streets but they were permanently divided into two by the exceptionally long “Peace” line that divides Divis from the lower Shankill and Peter’s Hill, Clonard from the middle Shankill, and Springfield from Woodvale.
On Northumberland Street there are two sets of security gates, built in the 1970s. These gates close in the evening (and until 2012 were closed entirely on Sundays) temporarily separating the two areas at night. The increasing use of the street by both local traffic and tourists moving between the Falls and the Shankill explains the increased presence of the murals on the wall, especially in the 2010s.
Like the so-called International Wall, the murals on Northumberland Street are a mix of international and local subjects.
On the Protestant side, a UFF mural on Beverley Street was painted over with street art in 2005, and a ‘Welcome To The Shankill Road’ mural was painted in 2011. Since then, pieces to the British and Israeli armies have been added.
At the very top of Northumberland Street, at the junction with the Shankill, there were Protestant Boys flute band murals on both s