Derry Walls

Vote Derry Walls by Tuesday

We need your help to make sure that the Derry Walls are recognised as a national treasure. The Derry Walls and Walls400 have been shortlisted as one of 12 National Treasures in the Northern Ireland regional section of the National Lottery’s ‘What’s Your National Treasure’ campaign .

We are up against the Albert Clock (Belfast), The Giant’s Causeway Visitor Centre, The Lyric Theatre (Belfast), The Metropolitan Arts Centre (Belfast), The Odyssey Complex (Belfast), SS Nomadic (Belfast), Sam Thompson Landmark Bridge (Belfast), St Patrick’s Visitor Centre (Downpatrick), The Strule Arts Centre (Omagh), Ulster Hall (Belfast), Ulster Museum (Belfast). Many of these landmark buildings or sites are owned by large public, private and community sector organisations with PR departments at their disposal.

Walls400 and the City Walls Heritage Project is the only dedicated resource working to promote the heritage of the Derry Walls as an educational and economic resource. We are a minnow in comparison to the task and the competition. Hence why we need your personal help and the help of your employer or any other organisation that you are a member of. We need you not only to vote for Derry Walls. We need you to ask your friends and colleagues to also vote for us. Your organisation or employer might be persuaded to adopt this campaign as their own. It would be great if they could ask all employees/members to also vote for Derry Walls by the Tuesday deadline.

Walls400 is trying to secure significant grant-aid to improve the presentation and understanding of the Derry Walls and it is important that people, locally, and supporters further afield, use the opportunity of this public vote to send out a loud message to potential funders that we believe that the Derry Walls are a national treasure.

Votes can be cast on www.nationallotterytreasures.co.uk or Facebook.com/LotteryGoodCauses until midnight on Tuesday 27 May. People taking part in the survey will be able to share their participation and will also have a chance to win one of five iPad Airs.

After Day 3 of Street Society 2014, drivers parking in spaces next to Derry Walls might have been confused about some extra white lines (temporary ones of course) which appeared overnight. The team of student architects had been there, marking out the layout of the missing Water Bastion. The Londonderry Sentinel reported in June 1844, that the Bastion had partly been taken down, the result of the widening of a set of steps from this North- East Bastion down to Foyle Street. A deputation from the Irish Society in 1838 had recommended the improvement of what they described as a “postern-gate communicating with Foyle Street” by the addition of a new step. The result today is that Water Bastion is now one of three missing bastions. An excavation by Nick Brannon in the late 1970s revealed the lozenge shaped plan of the missing bastion.

The students from QUB’s Street Society 2014 are looking at the space between the Central Library and the surviving City Walls, coming up with proposals about how this space might be animated to indicate the underlying archaeology.

On Day 4 the students started to draw up concept plans for the all three sites, viz. Water Bastion, Bishop Gate and the Plinth on Royal Bastion. They also looked at how people could be encouraged to explore the exterior of the Walls as well as just using the promenade along the top of the ramparts. The final concepts plans will be presented at an event on Friday afternoon in QUB’s Elmwood Hall where all the Street Society 2014 projects will be showcased. It is intended that the student’s ideas will be uploaded to this website to encourage local conversations about how to better present some interesting parts of Derry Walls.

Hands Up! if you think Derry Walls are a National Treasure

Vote Derry Walls by Tuesday

Days 3 & 4: QUB’s Street Society & the Missing Bits of Derry Walls