Interested in taking part in a major archaeological dig in Derry?
This September a major archaeological dig will take place on the grassy bank just below our famous City Walls above the Bogside. This dig will be facilitated by Queen’s University Centre for Community Archaeology and is kindly supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund.
Members of the public, schools, community groups and really anyone interested in helping for a few hours and getting their hands dirty, can register to take part in the Derry Town Ditch Dig scheduled for this September.
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 atthe link below or on the morning of the event.
‘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:
This large house stands on an elevated site overlooking the River Foyle. It is part of the historic core of the Ulster University’s Derry Campus. The house was built in the mid 1840s by David Watt and was first called Richmond. He was the owner of the Watts Distillery along with his brother Samuel, who lived at Foyle Hill above the Letterkenny Road. David Watt died in Richmond on the 22nd April 1876 and was buried in the graveyard of St. Columb’s Cathedral. The house was sold to a ship owners Bartholomew McCorkell, whose father William had built up the fleet of William McCorkell and Company founded in 1798.
Ceiling rose
Bartholomew McCorkell kept the name of Richmond but changed the plain house into what it is today by adding to it and redesigning it inside. After his death in 1887, Richmond passed to one of his daughters, Fannie Evelyn. She had been born in 1851 and had married Robert Corscadden from Boomhall. She died in 1922 and Richmond was passed to her nephew Lt Col Hugh Collum. On his death in 1929, Richmond was sold to Sir Basil McFarland who renamed it Aberfoyle.
Monogram on Northland Road gates.
During the Second World War the Aberfoyle was requisitioned by the Admiralty and leased to the US Navy. Thus Aberfoyle House was for the duration of the war part of the US Navy’s HQ for their naval operating base on the Foyle. The house was sold by Sir John McFarland to Bobbie Bell in 1986 who in turn sold it to the Derry City Council in 1987.
