The story of Derry's Walls
Derry began as a 6th-century Christian settlement — the name comes from the Irish Doire, meaning oak grove. The walled city you walk today was laid out in the early 1600s during the Plantation of Ulster, when the City of London livery companies funded the new town and added the prefix 'London' to its name.
The defensive walls were built between 1613 and 1619, roughly a mile in circuit with four original gates and a series of bastions. They were tested most famously in 1689, when the city withstood a 105-day siege by the forces of James II. The walls held, the gates stayed shut after thirteen apprentice boys locked them, and Derry earned its nickname the Maiden City for never being taken.
Those same walls overlook the Bogside, the district below that became central to the civil rights era and the Troubles, including Bloody Sunday in January 1972. The political murals painted on the gable walls there are now a fixture of the view from the ramparts.
Martin McCrossan began guiding visitors around this history in the early 1990s, and the company is now run by his daughter Charlene, a Blue Badge qualified guide. The family business has held a Tourism NI five-star rating since 2014 and has been showing people round the walls for over twenty years.