Derry is a city with a storied past, and depending on who you talk to, actual outcomes of events may slightly vary, as I learned during a couple of chats with museum educators and a local tour guide.
Derry is unique in that it contains the only remaining, completely walled city in Ireland and one of the finest in Europe.
Dating to 1619, Derry’s walls cost £11,700 at the time, and were built as defences for 17th century Ulster Scots settlers, who came here in pursuit of freedom. The walls are about 1.5 km long and are accessible via staircases positioned around the city.
[Martin McCrossan, tourism hero]
On a Martin McCrossan City Walking Tour, I learned about the history of Derry (which translates to oak grove, as the city was at one time surrounded by oak trees), and that up to 14 million people around the globe claim Irish ancestry, which explains how most cities have an Irish pub or two!
The Siege Museum both chronicles and commemorates the 1689 Siege and the 13 young apprentice boys who shut the city gates to keep out the army.
Although the gates were closed, the siege didn’t begin until a few months later. King James II arrived at Bishop’s Gate on April 18, 1689 and asked the city to surrender, convinced that they would do so following his appearance.
After four failed attempts to get Derry to surrender, he hastily retreated when a cannon was fired from the ramparts and an officer was killed. This began a siege that would last 105 days, resulting in around 8,000 deaths by disease due to lack of fresh water and food.
The Siege also went down in the history books as the largest ever in British military history.
The Apprentice Boys of Derry Club began in 1814 to commemorate the young heroes. A parade takes place here twice a year for the Shutting of the Gates and The Relief of Londonderry, two key events that include a cannon firing and the raising of the Siege Flags.
The Museum of Free Derry is a sober testament to Derry’s troubled political past through civil wars, protest marches, murders, and the eventual end to sectarianism in Bogside.
[The political demarkation line still exists near Bishop’s Gate, outside the walls]
Through several exhibits and short videos, you’ll learn the role that Britain played through politics and military might against a largely working class, oppressed population in one of Derry’s most crowded and bleak neighbourhoods.
Bloody Sunday (January 30, 1972), also known as the Bogside Massacre, was the price that this neighbourhood paid for Free Derry.
The museum hits close to home too: Between July 1969 and July 1972, 53 died in the streets here. Of those, 26 were killed by British forces.
[Billy and I outside the Museum of Free Derry]
Outside the museum, I was fortunate to have encountered Billy McVeigh, a protestor whose photo was taken in 1971 and memorialized in one of several murals lining the neighbouring streets, close to the Bloody Sunday Monument. A local artist depicted the photo of McVeigh next to a Saracen tank (the code name used by British forces).
Another space dedicated to decades of violent conflict and later peace is Derry’s Peacemakers Museum, about a 10-minute walk from the Museum of Free Derry.
[Bloody Sunday Monument]
The Peacemakers is also located in Bogside, with a focus on the time period of August 1972 to May 2007, through artefacts, archival footage, displays and interactive elements.
Also featured are the three Bogsiders (John Hurne, Mitchel McLaughlin, Martin McGuinness) responsible for helping to establish the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, putting in action a political template to resolve the years of conflict.
Derry’s Neo-Gothic Guildhall was built as a city hall in 1889, a replacement for an earlier Corporation Hall within the city walls.
Mostly destroyed by fire in 1908, a competition was held to select a design for the new building. City Surveyor Matthew Robinson was unsatisfied with the architect submissions and therefore designed the new Tudor-styled Guildhall himself in 1912.
It was again reopened in 2013 following a major internal and external restoration, including its stunning stained glass windows and the famous clock, modeled after London’s Big Ben.
The stained glass windows are replicas of the originals, destroyed by an IRA bomb in 1972.
1998 Nobel Peace Prize winner John Hume (visionary, leader, peacemaker) is also honoured on the second floor, with a glass case containing Hume’s medal and certificate as well as his International Gandhi Peace Prize shield and scroll from 2001.
The Guildhall also has a place in the history of Bloody Sunday, when in just 10 minutes, 13 civilians were shot dead and 18 more wounded during a march to protest internment. The plan was to march to the Guildhall but protestors believed that the army would prohibit this, so a change of plans led the march to Free Derry Square in Bogside instead.
Two days later, the Widgery enquiry for Bloody Sunday was launched. It lasted about 12 days and was a complete whitewash.
26 years later, in 1998, an unprecedented second enquiry (aka the Saville) was launched by the British government. This one actually sat in Derry, lasted 12 years and cost £190 million, the longest and most expensive in British history.
In 2010, 38 years later, final copies of the 5,000 page report from that enquiry were delivered to the Guildhall. Thousands gathered outside to hear the results of the enquiry. The crowd erupted into cheers as the verdict was announced: None of victims had posed a threat to cause death or serious injury, but were fleeing the scene and locating the wounded. As it turns out, all British soldiers were to blame for the murders of Bloody Sunday on January 30, 1972.
The events of that disastrous day were declared “unjust and unjustifiable” by former Prime Minister David Cameron.
The Derry Girls exhibit figures prominently in the Tower Museum. Here you’ll find set props on display, including outfits by Costume Designer Cathy Prior, who worked on all seasons of the immensely popular show.
[Clare’s school uniform, complete with rainbow pin for her coming out on the show]
The Derry Girls mural was painted in January 2019 on the side of Badger’s Bar for the show’s second season. It’s Derry’s most Instagrammed site, next to The Undertones mural of course!
Derry Girls is based on creator Lisa McGee’s experience as a Derry teenager in the 90’s. Lead character Erin Quinn, who dreams of becoming a writer, is based on McGee.
Once fans are finished with this section of the museum, towards the back of the ground floor is an extended history of Derry, including a great overview film.
Comprising four floors of the museum is a permanent exhibition highlighting the Spanish Armada (and its excavation), since La Trinidad Valencera sank in September 1588 in Kinnagoe Bay on her way home following the defeat.
Navigational aids at the time were unsophisticated, Spanish seamen knew little about the North Atlantic’s stormy seas, and charts were inaccurate.
Many Armada ships were nudged eastwards by the Gulf Stream, their crews unexpectedly finding themselves near the Irish coast. Ultimately, a series of cyclones led to the sinking of the Valencera. Over 30 Spanish ships were lost off the Western coasts of Scotland and Ireland.
