County Derry Guide (Doire)
“The Oak Leaf County” - in the province of Ulster. County town: Derry.
The only fully walled city in Ireland, on the banks of the Foyle.
Derry is built around Ireland’s only completely walled city, whose 17th-century walls still encircle the old town above the River Foyle. The county runs from the historic city out to the wild Sperrin Mountains and a dramatic north coast at Mussenden Temple and Downhill. A place of deep history, resilience and a famously warm welcome.
Few places in Ireland carry as much history within so small a compass as Derry, whose county town remains the only completely walled city on the island. The walls, raised between 1613 and 1619 during the Plantation of Ulster, were never breached - hence the nickname the Maiden City - and today you can walk their full circuit above the Bogside and the Guildhall. Beyond the city, the county unfolds into the heathery Sperrin Mountains, the fertile Roe and Faughan valleys, and a magnificent Atlantic coastline at Downhill, Castlerock and Portstewart, where the clifftop Mussenden Temple has become one of the most photographed buildings in Ireland.
Derry earned its living for generations from shirt-making - by the late nineteenth century it was one of the great shirt-producing centres of the world, an industry that famously employed far more women than men. The county's cultural weight is remarkable: Seamus Heaney grew up on a farm at Mossbawn near Bellaghy, and his poetry is saturated with this landscape of flax dams, bog and blackberries. In 2013 Derry-Londonderry became the first ever UK City of Culture, and the Peace Bridge across the Foyle, opened in 2011, has become a symbol of a city and county looking forward while honouring both of its traditions.
Cities, towns and villages in Derry
- Derry city - Ireland's only completely walled city, built on a hill above the River Foyle and the first ever UK City of Culture in 2013.
- Coleraine - A busy university and market town near the mouth of the River Bann, close to Mountsandel, one of the earliest known settlement sites in Ireland.
- Limavady - The town where Jane Ross noted down the Londonderry Air, the melody of Danny Boy, from a travelling fiddler in the 1850s.
- Portstewart - A Victorian seaside resort whose two-mile strand is managed by the National Trust and hosts surfers year round.
- Magherafelt - A thriving Plantation-era market town and the main commercial centre of south Derry.
- Bellaghy - Seamus Heaney's home village, now home to the Seamus Heaney HomePlace arts centre and the poet's grave.
- Dungiven - A gateway town to the Sperrins with a ruined Augustinian priory holding the ornate tomb of chieftain Cooey na Gall O'Cahan.
- Castlerock - A small resort village beneath Downhill Demesne, where the Mussenden Temple perches dramatically on the cliff edge.
- Maghera - A market town at the foot of the Glenshane Pass with the remains of a sixth-century monastery founded by St Lurach.
- Eglinton - A neat planned village near Lough Foyle, laid out by the Grocers' Company of London and now home to City of Derry Airport.
Famous people from Derry
- Seamus Heaney - Nobel Prize-winning poet born at Mossbawn near Castledawson and raised in Bellaghy, whose work is rooted in the south Derry countryside.
- St Colmcille (Columba) - The sixth-century saint who founded a monastery in the oak grove that gave Derry its name before sailing to Iona.
- John Hume - Derry-born SDLP leader and architect of the peace process, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1998.
- Phil Coulter - Derry songwriter and pianist whose anthem The Town I Loved So Well is a love letter to his native city.
- Dana (Rosemary Scallon) - Raised in Derry's Bogside, she won the 1970 Eurovision Song Contest for Ireland with All Kinds of Everything.
- Feargal Sharkey - Derry-born frontman of The Undertones, whose Teenage Kicks was John Peel's favourite record of all time.
- Roma Downey - Derry-born actress and producer best known for the American series Touched by an Angel.
- Nadine Coyle - Derry singer who found fame as a member of the chart-topping group Girls Aloud.
- Martin O'Neill - Footballer and manager from Kilrea who captained Northern Ireland and later managed the Republic of Ireland.
- Seamus Deane - Derry-born poet, critic and novelist whose Reading in the Dark drew on his Bogside childhood.
Did you know?
- Derry's city walls, completed in 1619, are the only complete city walls in Ireland and were never breached, earning Derry the title of the Maiden City.
- The Siege of Derry in 1689 lasted 105 days and is remembered as the longest siege in British and Irish history.
- Amelia Earhart landed in a field at Ballyarnett just outside Derry in 1932, completing the first solo transatlantic flight by a woman.
- The melody of Danny Boy, known as the Londonderry Air, was collected in Limavady in the 1850s by Jane Ross.
- The name Derry comes from the Irish Doire, meaning oak grove, recalling the wood where St Colmcille founded his monastery.
- In the nineteenth century Derry was one of the shirt-making capitals of the world, and its factories were even mentioned by Karl Marx in Das Kapital.
- Mountsandel near Coleraine has evidence of habitation from around 7600 BC, among the oldest known human settlement sites in Ireland.
- Derry-Londonderry was named the first ever UK City of Culture in 2013, marked by the opening of the curved Peace Bridge across the Foyle in 2011.
Places to visit in Derry
- Derry City Walls - The only completely walled city in Ireland.
Surnames from Derry: O'Connor · Doherty · McLoughlin · Kane · Quigley · Harkin · McCloskey · Mullan · Hegarty · Bradley · Barr · Breslin