Sights in County Derry
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Museum of Free Derry
The Museum of Free Derry, just off Rossville St, chronicles the history of the Bogside, the civil rights movement and the events of Bloody Sunday through photographs, newspaper reports, film clips and the accounts of first-hand witnesses, including some of the original photographs which inspired the murals of the People's Gallery.
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Bloody Sunday Memorial
A simple granite obelisk that commemorates the 14 civilians who were shot dead by the British Army on 30 January 1972. Bloody Sunday tragically echoed Dublin's Bloody Sunday of November 1920. Derry's Bloody Sunday was a turning point in the history of the Troubles. On Sunday 30 January 1972, the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association organised a peaceful march through Derry in protest against internment without trial, which had been introduced by the British government the previous year.
Some 15,000 people marched from Creggan through the Bogside towards the Guildhall, but were stopped by British Army barricades at the junction of William and Rossville Sts. The main…
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People's Gallery Murals
The 12 murals that decorate the gable ends of houses along Rossville St, near Free Derry Corner, are popularly referred to as the People's Gallery. They are the work of Tom Kelly, Will Kelly and Kevin Hasson, known as 'the Bogside Artists'. The three men have spent most of their lives in the Bogside, and lived through the worst of the Troubles.
Their murals, mostly painted between 1997 and 2001, commemorate key events in the Troubles, including the Battle of the Bogside, Bloody Sunday, Operation Motorman (the British Army's operation to retake IRA-controlled no-go areas in Derry and Belfast in July 1972) and the 1981 hunger strike. The most powerful images are those…
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St Columb's Cathedral
Built between 1628 and 1633 from the same grey-green schist as the city walls, St Columb's Cathedral was the first post-Reformation church to be built in Britain and Ireland, and is Derry's oldest surviving building.
In the porch (under the spire, by the St Columb's Court entrance) you can see the original foundation stone of 1633 that records the cathedral's completion, inscribed: If stones could speake/Then London's prayse/Should sounde who/Built this church and/Cittie from the grounde.
The smaller stone inset, inscribed 'In Templo Verus Deus Est Vereo Colendus' (The True God is in His Temple and is to be truly worshipped), comes from the original church built here in…
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Free Derry Corner
The Bogside district, to the west of the walled city, developed in the 19th and early 20th centuries as a working-class, predominantly Catholic, residential area. By the 1960s, its serried ranks of small, terraced houses had become an overcrowded ghetto of poverty and unemployment, a focus for the emerging civil rights movement and a hotbed of nationalist discontent.
In August 1969 the three-day 'Battle of the Bogside' - a running street battle between local youths and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) - prompted the UK government to send British troops into Northern Ireland. The residents of the Bogside and neighbouring Brandywell districts - 33,000 of them - declared…
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City Walls
Derry's walled city is Ireland's earliest example of town planning. It is thought to have been modelled on the French Renaissance town of Vitry-le-François, designed in 1545 by Italian engineer Hieronimo Marino; both are based on the grid plan of a Roman military camp, with two main streets at right angles to each other, and four city gates, one at the end of each street.
Completed in 1619, Derry's city walls are about 8m high and 9m thick, with a circumference of about 1.5km, and are the only city walls in Ireland to survive almost intact. The four original gates (Shipquay, Ferryquay, Bishop's and Butcher's) were rebuilt in the 18th and 19th centuries, when three new…
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Tower Museum
Just inside the Magazine Gate is the award-winning Tower Museum , housed in a replica 16th-century tower house. Head straight to the fifth floor for a view from the top of the tower, then work your way down through the excellent Armada Shipwreck exhibition, which tells the story of La Trinidad Valenciera - a ship of the Spanish Armada which was wrecked at Kinnagoe Bay in Donegal in 1588.
It was discovered by the City of Derry Sub-Aqua Club in 1971 and excavated by marine archaeologists. On display are bronze guns, pewter tableware and personal items - a wooden comb, an olive jar, a shoe sole - recovered from the site, including a 2.5-tonne siege gun bearing the arms of…
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Guildhall
Standing just outside the city walls opposite the Tower Museum, the neo-Gothic Guildhall was originally built in 1890, then rebuilt after a fire in 1908. As the seat of the old Londonderry Corporation, which institutionalised the policy of discriminating against Catholics over housing and jobs, it incurred the wrath of nationalists and was bombed twice by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in 1972.
From 2000 to 2005 it was the seat of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry (www.bloody-sunday-inquiry.org.uk), headed by Lord Saville, which sat from March 2000 till December 2004. The inquiry heard from 900 witnesses, received 2500 witness statements, and allegedly cost the British taxpayer…
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Workhouse Museum
Across the river from the walled city lies the largely Protestant Waterside district. At the height of the Troubles, many Protestants living in and around the Bogside moved across the river to escape the worst of the violence. Here you'll find the Workhouse Museum housed in Derry's original 1840-1946 workhouse.
Daily life at the workhouse for the 800 inmates was designed to encourage them to leave as soon as possible, alive or dead. One of the exhibits is the grisly horse-drawn hearse used to carry away the corpses.
Other displays cover the Potato Famine, while the excellent Atlantic Memorial exhibition tells the story of the WWII Battle of the Atlantic and the major role…
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Long Tower Church
Outside the city walls to the southwest is Long Tower Church, Derry's first post-Reformation Catholic church. Built in 1784 in neo-Renaissance style, it stands on the site of the medieval Teampall Mór (Great Church), built in 1164, whose stones were used to help build the city walls in 1609. Long Tower was built with the support of the Anglican bishop of the time, Frederick Augustus Harvey, who presented the capitals for the four Corinthian columns framing the ornate high altar.
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Mountsandel Fort
Just 1.5km south of the town centre, on the east bank of the river, Mountsandel Fort is a massive and mysterious earthwork that may have been an early-Christian stronghold or a later Anglo-Norman fortification. From the Mountsandel Forest parking area on Mountsandel Rd, a 2.5km circular walk leads high above the River Bann to the fort, where you descend steeply down to the riverbank and return upstream past the Victorian lock and weir at Cutts.
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St Eugene's Cathedral
The Roman Catholic St Eugene's Cathedral was begun in 1851 as a response to the end of the Great Famine, and dedicated to St Eugene in 1873 by Bishop Kelly; the handsome east window (1891) is a memorial to the bishop. The bells of St Eugene's still ring every night at 21:00 as a reminder of the Penal Laws (in force from 1691 until the early 19th century) which forbade Catholics to attend mass and subjected them to a 21:00 curfew.
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Downhill Estate
The original demesne covered some 160 hectares, which is now part of the National Trust’s Downhill Estate. The beautiful landscaped gardens below the ruins of the house are the work of celebrated gardener Jan Eccles, who became custodian of Downhill at the age of 60 and created the garden over a period of 30 years. She died in 1997 aged 94.
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Hands Across the Divide
As you enter the city across Craigavon Bridge, the first thing you see is the Hands Across the Divide monument. This striking bronze sculpture of two men reaching out to each other symbolises the spirit of reconciliation and hope for the future; it was unveiled in 1992, 20 years after Bloody Sunday.
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Harbour Museum
The small, old-fashioned Harbour Museum, with models of ships, a replica of a currach - an early sailing boat of the type that carried St Colmcille to Iona - and the bosomy figurehead of the Minnehaha, is housed in the old Harbour Commissioner's Building next to the Guildhall.
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Bogside Artists Studio
The Bogside Artists Studio is tucked behind the Bogside Inn; tours are available for groups if booked in advance. It is the studio of Tom Kelly, Will Kelly and Kevin Hasson, known as 'The Bogside Artists', famous as the creators of the murals that make up the People's Gallery.
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McGilloway Gallery
A commercial gallery that provides a showcase for the best of contemporary Irish art, the McGilloway sells work by local artists and stages around half a dozen exhibitions each year.
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Green Lane Museum
The Green Lane Museum contains old photographs and relics of the valley’s flax industry.
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Hunger Strikers' Memorial
Near Free Derry Corner is the H-shaped Hunger Strikers' Memorial.
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Roe Valley Country Park
This lovely country park, about 3km south of Limavady, has riverside walks stretching for 5km either side of the River Roe. The area is associated with the O'Cahans, who ruled the valley until the Plantation. The 17th-century settlers saw the flax-growing potential of the damp river valley and the area became an important linen-manufacturing centre.
The Dogleap Centre houses a visitor centre and tearoom. Next door is Ulster's first domestic hydroelectric power station, opened in 1896; it opens by request at the visitor centre. The nearby Green Lane Museum contains old photographs and relics of the valley's flax industry. The scutch mill, where the flax was pounded, is a…
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People's Gallery & Studio
Located on 'Aggro Corner', the street intersection once notorious as the kicking-off point for confrontations between Bogsiders and security forces, the Bogside Artists' gallery provides an exhibition space for local and international artists, and runs art workshops for young people. You can buy prints of the murals, and the Bogside Artists themselves are often in residence – they are happy to sign books and posters, and offer guided tours of the murals.
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Causeway Speciality Market
On the second Saturday of each month, a market is held in the Diamond. It sells a range of local crafts and organic produce, from hand-turned wooden bowls and homemade candles to farmhouse jam from Ballywalter, County Down, and sheep-milk cheese from County Derry.
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Workhouse Museum
The Workhouse Museum is housed in Derry’s original 1840–1946 workhouse. Daily life at the workhouse for the 800 inmates was designed to encourage them to leave as soon as possible, alive or dead. One of the exhibits is the grisly horse-drawn hearse used to carry away the corpses.
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Tower Museum
Inside the Magazine Gate is this award-winning museum, housed in a replica 16th-century tower house. Head straight to the 5th floor for a view from the top of the tower, then work your way down through the excellent Armada Shipwreck exhibition, which tells the story of La Trinidad Valenciera – a ship of the Spanish Armada that was wrecked at Kinnagoe Bay in Donegal in 1588. It was discovered by the City of Derry Sub-Aqua Club in 1971 and excavated by marine archaeologists. On display are bronze guns, pewter tableware and personal items – a wooden comb, an olive jar, a shoe sole – recovered from the site, including a 2.5-tonne siege gun bearing the arms of Phillip II of…
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St Eugene’s Cathedral
The Roman Catholic St Eugene’s Cathedral was begun in 1851 as a response to the end of the Great Famine, and dedicated to St Eugene in 1873 by Bishop Kelly; the handsome east window (1891) is a memorial to the bishop. The bells of St Eugene’s still ring every night at 9pm as a reminder of the Penal Laws (in force from 1691 until the early 19th century) which forbade Catholics from attending mass and subjected them to a 9pm curfew.
reviewed