On any other Saturday Lecky Road carries traffic through the Bogside area of Derry, but at the weekend it featured an army of teenagers building a bonfire that some would wish to see stopped.
On the other side of Meenan Square, Phil Coulter’s The Town I Loved So Well could be heard over the speakers before a local singer serenaded shoppers at a nearby family fun day with a rousing rendition of the Wolfe Tones’ We’re On The One Road.
Street traders along the road sold everything from coffee and cake to tricolours and novelty 1916 t-shirts.
In one corner, two women were doing a roaring trade in homemade crafts, while another stall featured traditional Irish ornaments.
Residents chatted as children ran between the stalls, and the atmosphere was that of a village fete – a long way from the “anti-community” label so often attached to August 15 republican bonfires.
Bemused tourists stopped to photograph the bonfire alongside their usual snaps at Free Derry Corner.
Between the fun day on one side and the fire on the other sits Meenan Square, the derelict site where the Bogside’s bonfire previously burned and is now fenced off for an £11 million redevelopment.
This year’s bonfire was still being built on Saturday afternoon, as young men aged in their early to mid-teens, masked to hide their faces, passed pallets to the top of the impromptu structure, which locals say sprang up in protest against the seizure of up to 500 pallets by the Department for Infrastructure (DfI) from under the Lecky Road flyover early on Wednesday morning.
The bonfire at the Bogside
It is understood that a site away from road users and housing had been discussed by the builders ahead of the raid.
The DfI said on Sunday that it was not aware of any proposed or alternative bonfire site, while Derry and Strabane District Council had yet to reply to a request for comment from the Irish News at the time of publication.
The DfI said on Sunday that it was not aware of any proposed or alternative bonfire site, while Derry and Strabane District Council had yet to reply to a request for comment from the Irish News at the time of publication.
Nearby, a small boy pointed up in admiration at an older lad hauling pallets to the summit.
The August 15 bonfire is usually lit in the Bogside on the date of the Catholic Feast of the Assumption, to mark the introduction of internment without trial in August 1971. This year, it was also lit as a protest.
Last Wednesday morning, in the dawn operation overseen by the PSNI, DfI contractors loaded the pallets destined for the bonfire which were being stored under the Lecky Road flyover into lorries.
The department, whose minister is Sinn Féin MLA Liz Kimmins, said the “illegal storage” of the pallets posed a “significant fire safety risk” because of gas mains beneath the tarmac.
Locals were unconvinced by the explanation.
“Now they’re telling us there’s a gas main down there,” one resident said.
“There were pallets stored in there for years.”
Within hours of the seizure, disorder had broken out.
By Saturday, the seized pallets had been replaced and there was a mood of excitement in the air.
“This is a celebration. It’s a family celebration. The 15th – it’s a holiday. That’s why these things happen in the first place,” one resident told The Irish News.
Again and again, residents returned to the same grievance: a site had been agreed, and then the lorries came anyway.
One Bogside man, standing in front of the pyre, put it bluntly: “Whoever sent them on, whoever got the contractors – instead of engaging with the young people and saying, look, what can we do here, they just tried to bite the hand of the youth.
“No matter what, there’s always going to be a bonfire in these republican areas. I don’t see it ever not happening. If they can all come together and get it in a safe location and it’s all done by level heads, I don’t see why not.”
Speaking on Wednesday following the seizure, First Minister Michelle O’Neill commended those who removed the pallets from the department-owned land.
A poster baring her face along with the words “Sinn Féin sellouts” appeared on the pyre on Saturday.
The following day, the First Minister described the bonfires as a “blight” and labelled the actions of the night before as the “very opposite of republicanism”.
“The burning of images and references to me in Derry last night are the very opposite of republicanism,” she said.
“Let me be very clear, I will not be deterred, distracted or intimidated.
“I will continue to call out sectarianism, anti-community activity and destruction wherever it comes from.
“These bonfires are a blight on our community.”
Among those at the family fun day, there was a mood that Stormont’s nationalist politicians are no longer in touch with the area where they once held much sway.
A large sign by Free Derry Corner read ‘Sovereignty not Stormont’.
There is warmer feeling towards local council candidates such as independent republican Gary Donnelly, who topped the poll locally last time round with 1,868 first-preference votes.
The bonfire at the Bogside
Beneath the politics sits something much simpler – the conviction that the area has been left behind.
“Derry has been a forgotten city, there’s no doubt about it,” one local said.
“You’ve seen Belfast – the Fleadh, and it was absolutely amazing. I was up there myself. The infrastructure they had for it. The Fleadh and the Féile, then you come down here and the young ones have nothing at all.
“You can tell, throughout the years of deprivation that there’s been in the Bogside, it’s been absolutely awful. The politicians here should hang their heads in shame.”
For many here, the pallet seizure was not an isolated decision but the latest chapter in a much longer story about how their community is policed.
Ryan, a man in his 30s at the fun day, drew the comparison that came up in almost every conversation.
“You see the 12th of July – they’ve bands, concerts, funfairs, everything, and the police escort them around but they’re on our backs.
“My father dealt with it, my grandfather dealt with it, and now we’re still dealing with it this year. I don’t think it’ll ever change.”
When asked by the Irish News about the removal of the pallets from the DfI land under the flyover, the PSNI said in a statement: “If a landowner requests the presence of police in order to prevent a breach of the peace during the removal of material from their land, we will always consider this request for support.”
A sign in the Bogside area of Derry
Despite support from many locals for a bonfire, not everyone welcomes this year’s location.
“There’s old people in the houses and it’s not fair on them being put out of their homes,” one man said.
“But that’s where it comes back to location again.”
Many residents also said they did not support the burning of flags on the pyre, but pointed to the age of those involved and to the fact that the teenagers see the same happening from their counterparts across the sectarian divide.
On Sunday the PSNI said it was treating the burning of material at three bonfires across the city as sectarian-motivated hate crimes.
As part of a statement, Chief Superintendent Gillian Kearney, PSNI commander of Derry City and Strabane, said: “The material placed on bonfires in the city is disgraceful, and is to be condemned.”
Up the hill on the nearby Creggan estate, the second of the city’s three pyres had reached some 40 feet, draped in a sea of red, white and blue – Union flags, Ulster banners and other memorabilia.
Before sunset on Saturday, scores of youngsters had already gathered at the site.
There was hostility towards the media here, perhaps in the wake of coverage of a flag erected days earlier on a roadside sign across from the site.
The black flag, bearing the words ‘Kill all cops, Kill all Huns’ was condemned across the political spectrum, with SDLP Foyle MP Colum Eastwood calling for it to be taken down.
On Saturday evening, the flag was still flying.
Further down the hill, the atmosphere was warmer as community workers were packing up after a family fun day, local families still lingering around the site.
“I’ve had six weeks planning this,” one of the workers said.
“The people of Creggan have really enjoyed it. It’s positive. It brings a load of young ones onto the street and they’ve been buzzing at it.
“People in the media don’t see the impact these fun days have, bringing people together. It’s all negative, negative, negative, and it makes people think Creggan is a negative place. This place is bustling.”
The event, like its counterpart in the Bogside, was entirely self-funded. Neither received public money.
Asked about the flag flying up the hill, the workers declined to comment. “We’re not a part of the bonfire,” one said.
“What we are trying to do is a positive thing coming out of the 15th of August
“Our alternative is hopefully to eventually do away with bonfires and do something like the Féile in Belfast here in Derry.
“But you can’t just wipe out a fire overnight.”
As darkness came down on the Bogside, fireworks lit the sky above the walls and the young and not-so-young descended to see the pyre set alight, the songs of the afternoon still ringing around streets now packed with onlookers.
Later, across the river at Ebrington Square – the former British Army barracks, now a glitzy cross-community shared space of couples and hen parties drinking craft beer and cocktails – the contrast with the self-funded, community-grown festivals in streets a few minutes up the road was stark.
Many believe that those who suffered most during the Troubles have seen the least of the peace dividend.
On Saturday, nobody was arguing otherwise.