The Great Northern Plot

Posted on by Niall McCaughan

On this date four centuries ago, 31st July 1615, the trial of 17 native Irishmen, accused of being involved in the Great Northern Plot, was brought to a conclusion in the half-built Plantation city of Londonderry. Six of them were found guilty and were executed; some historians claim they were hanged, drawn and quartered, their heads afterwards being set up on the rudimentary city gates.

 This event had significant implications for the relationships between the native Irish and the English and Scottish settlers in County Derry; it also spurned on the Irish Society to start building the Derry Walls in earnest; orphans from Christ’s Hospital in London were sent to Derry to be apprentices for that purpose.

Mark Lusby, Project Coordinator for the Friends of the Derry Walls remarked, “The landscape of the City we live in today and the richness of our cultural identity was shaped by these tumultuous events four centuries ago. During each year of the 5-year quadricentennial, 2013-18, of the building of the Derry Walls, the Friends organise events unpacking that history and exploring the legacy. In 2013 it was the marking out of the ground on which the Walls were to be built; in 2014 it was the appointment of Peter Benson, a master tiler and bricklayer from London, as the contractor to build the Walls. 2015 gives us an opportunity to give voice, in the story of the construction of the Walls, to the native Irish who were trying to find space alongside the English and Scots settlers. In this way Walls400 is kept in the public eye, building up each year to a major Derry Walls heritage year in 2018.”

The Friends of the Derry Walls, a local voluntary sector organisation with the objective of promoting the heritage value of the city’s greatest visitor attraction, will be organising, later this year, a lecture on the Great Northern Plot of 1615. Details will be published in the local press.

The photograph is a gruesome depiction in Derry’s Tower Museum of the severed head of Rory O’Cahan, resting on the half-built Derry Walls. Rory O’Cahan was the son of Sir Donnell Ballagh O’Cahan, clan leader of the O’Kanes, who himself in 1615, was imprisoned in the Tower of London.

The Blooming Walls

Posted on by Niall McCaughan

In the past few weeks, the Derry Walls have become green with vegetation. Most abundant is ivy-leaved toadflax Cymbalaria muralis. 

Cymbalaria muralis

This plant, native to the Southern Europe,  is common on ancient walls  and is also called  Wandering Sailor and Coliseum Ivy. It has heart-shaped leaves with three or more lobes. The delicate flowers are held on stalks which are phototrophic: positively when flowering and negatively when the seeds are produced. This results in the seeds being deposited in crevices in the Walls when the stalks start to turn away from the light. Another plant common on the Derry Walls is Walls Rue Asplenium ruta-muraria, a species of fern which love the lime-mortar used to point the Walls.

Asplenium ruta-muraria

Another plant to look out for on the Walls is Pellitory of the Wall Parietaria judaica. It bears tiny flowers directly on its hairy stems. It overwinters through buds located just below the soil surface.

Parietaria judaica

The DOE Conservation Plan for the Derry Walls,  policy 41 states “guidance should be included in the Management Plan that will ensure existing botanical interests are identified, managed and protected in an appropriate manner”. However the DOE Management Plan’s only mention of botany is to state that the NIEA will remove weeds from the Walls on an annual basis. Certainly, plants which are deep rooting such as buddleia cause damage to the structure of the monument. Small annual plants can help the monument by shading the masonry and supporting a more diverse range of wildlife. The Friends of the Derry Walls will be encouraging DOE NIEA to produce specific guidance  on the management of plant life on the Derry Walls, controlling those which injurious, protecting those which add to the attractiveness of the Walls for visitors and wildlife. A walk around the walls with a botanist will be arranged – details to come.

Buddleia

Culzean Castle and the Derry Walls

Posted on by Niall McCaughan

Earls of Cassillis Culzean Castle near Maybole, Carrick on the Ayrshire coast is owned by the National Trust for Scotland. It is the ancestral home of the Earls of Cassillis and chieftains of the Clan Kennedy. In the churchyard of St Columb’s Cathedral is a tombstone emblazoned with the coat of arms of the Earls of Cassillis. There are no other markings on the tombstone but it is presumed that it marks the burial place of the Kennedys of Derry (and Clogher), who claimed descent from the Earls of Cassillis. Two of the individuals buried here are Cornet Henry Kennedy who died during the 1688-9 Siege of Derry and his nephew, Alderman Horas Kennedy 1652-1714, who as Sheriff had ridden out from Derry with the Deputy Mayor on the 7th December 1688 to meet the Earl of Antrim’s Regiment which had come to take possession of the City.

The same coat of arms can been seen at the Beech Hill Country House Hotel, the demesne of which had fallen to George Crookshank Kennedy Skipton. One of his daughters is buried in the grave in St Columb’s Cathedral, Derry.