Derry Walls Walking Tour – Saturday 29th June 2024

The Friends of The Derry Walls is delighted to announce a Walking Tour titled ‘Living on an Island – landscape and stories.’ This tour along the length of the Island of Derry will be given by Dr Liam Campbell, from Gallows Strand to the Gullet. This event is part of Foyle Maritime Festival

Liam Campbell explores the Walls and the Island City in it’s wider river landscape context in Derry, Donegal and Tyrone, maintaining that we cannot understand the Walls unless we look at the relationship that they have with the Foyle, the Swilly and indeed wider Atlantic.

Liam Campbell is Director of the Mellon Centre for Migration Studies based at the Ulster American Folk Park. He has published and lectured widely on heritage and environmental issues. Prior to that he worked as a television producer for some 20 years before returning to academia. He is a visiting lecturer at East Tennessee State University where he spent a year as Basler Chair for Integration of the Arts and Sciences in 2018. With undergraduate degrees from NUI Maynooth and masters degrees from both Queen’s University Belfast and Ulster University, he completed his PhD at Ulster University. His recent book Room for the River – The Foyle Catchment Landscape : Connecting People, Place and Nature has just been reprinted in paperback. He has just co-edited an Atlas of Lough Neagh’s built, natural and cultural heritage.

The Friends of the Derry Walls 2024 program is kindly sponsored this year by Inner City Trust

The Walking Tour will leave the Verbal Arts Centre, Stable Lane, Derry, sharp at 10:30am on Saturday 29th June Tickets are through Eventbrite at the link below or on the morning of the event.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/living-on-an-island-landscape-and-stories-tickets-929348726057

‘Limer-Derry’. Illustrated talk by Sarah McCutcheon, Archaeologist

‘Limer-Derry’. Illustrated talk by Sarah McCutcheon, Archaeologist, Limerick City and County Council, on Limerick’s City Walls and the Siege of Limerick.

“An introduction to the evolution of Limerick City and its defences up to 1760 when it was declared an open city, and focussing on the final two sieges of 1690 & 1691″

Members get a 50% discount, at the door on the night!

For more information and tickets, Link on the Link below:

Branding Derry Londonderry 

Festivals, like Halloween, are great opportunities to get photos, which reinforce the brand identity of a destination. I love this image of the fireworks over the Nomadic and the Titanic signature building so this Halloween I tried to get some Halloween pics on my iPhone with the Derry Walls in them. The Walls Friends would love to see yours, so please share them with us! #


Main image courtesy of Nomadic Belfast

A very strong wall, excellently made and neatly wrought.

Near the end of 1618 Captain Nicholas Pynnar, the official Inspector of Fortifications in Ireland, had been appointed to survey the progress of the Ulster Plantation and specifically:

the Works and Plantation performed by the City of London in the City and County of London-Derry.

His report, dated 28th March 1619, provides the first official certification of the completeness of the Derry Walls:

The Cittie of London Derry is now compassed about with a verie strong wall, excellentlie made and neatlie wrought, beinge all of good lyme and stone.

This survey is supported by the first illustration of the complete city walls.

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In 2019, the Friends of the Derry Walls will be marking the quadricentennial of Pynnar Survey and the first official certification of the completeness of the Derry Walls.  As a start-up charitable interest group, the Walls Friends  are looking for your support and your ideas to help us explore the legacy of one of Ireland’s most important national monuments.