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 themselves independent of the civil authorities, and barricaded the streets to keep the security forces out. 'Free Derry', as it was known, was a no-go area for the police and army, its streets patrolled by IRA volunteers. In 1972 the area around Rossville St witnessed the horrific events of Bloody Sunday.

Since then the area has been extensively redeveloped, the old houses and flats demolished and replaced with modern housing and the population is now down to 8000.

All that remains of the old Bogside is Free Derry Corner at the intersection of Fahan and Rossville Sts, where the gable end of a house painted with the famous slogan 'You Are Now Entering Free Derry' still stands.