St Columb came out of Donegal to escape the plague 1,400 years ago and founded his first monastery in the oak grove (Doire in Gaelic), a gift from his cousin, Prince of Aileach. It was a holy place. The saint said that 'the angels of God sang in the glades of Derry and every leaf held its angel.' Oak groves were sacred places for the Celtic peoples who once lived over most of Western Europe.' Oak' placenames occur frequently throughout the continent, as well as in Britain and Ireland. This reflects both the widespread nature of the ancient oak forests, and also the important position these trees occupied in the culture and ceremonial of the Celts. Derry was almost certainly one of those Celtic ritual places. In the sixth century A.D. a Christian monastery was founded on the hill of Derry. The hills may be bare but there are fertile valleys lower down. The huge oaks and elms of the primeval forest of Glenconkeyne north-west of Lough Neagh delighted the new settlers. They chopped them all down and floated the logs down the Bann to build Coleraine and Limavady.
Colmcille founded many important monasteries in Ireland and Britain, including Durrow in the Irish midlands and Iona on an island off the west of Scotland. The site was allegedly granted by a local king who had a fortress there. A similar kind of fortress can be seen at the spectacular Grianan of Aileach, a few miles west of the city and now in County Donegal. During the later middle ages the old monastery of Derry evolved into an Augustinian congregation. The church of that monastery survived up to the seventeenth century and was used, as their first place of worship, by the London colonists who came here to build the walled city.
The name Derry derives from the old Irish word Daire meaning an oak grove, particularly an oak grove on an island totally or partly surrounded by water or peat bog. Such was the case at Derry. The original oak grove which gave its name to the city and the various settlements which followed it, were all located in turn on a small hill which was formerly an island in the River Foyle. The channel which swept past the western side of that island gradually dried out leaving a marshy, boggy area.
In time this area became known as the BOGSIDE. The name ’Bogside’ derives from Derry’s original situation, as an island surrounded by the River Foyle. The Western aspect of the River eventually ran dry many hundreds of years ago, leaving a marshy bog in its wake. It was here that the Bogside developed, immediately outside the confines of what was to become the Walled City. It is now one of the best known areas of the city. Although the Vikings certainly sailed up the loughs and rivers of this area, the monastery of Derry escaped the worst effects of their raids. Derry's medieval heydays were in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries when the local Mac Lochlainn dynasty moved into the settlement. The area has grown to prominence through the modern conflict in North Ireland, but its whole history is seen by many as being emblematic of the Catholic experience of Ulster since the Plantation.
The Old meets the new at Culmore with modern developments sitting alongside Boom Hall, a historic riverside residence with connections to the Siege of Derry in 1689.
CULMORE is where Derry ends and Donegal begins. Though not born in Derry, General Walker has become synonymous with the city because of his involvement with the Siege of Derry in 1689 and his subsequent writings on the subject. Walker was born c.1645. After attending Trinity College, Dublin he went on to become an Anglican priest and was appointed to the parishes of Lissan and Desertlyn in Co. Londonderry and Armagh Dioscese. In 1674 he became rector of Donoughmore, near Dungannon, Co. Tyrone. In 1688 he raised a regiment at Dungannon and in the following yeare he fought the Jacobite army around Strabane and Coleraine. Throughout the Siege of Derry Walker acted as Governor of the city, replacing and assisting in the escape of the much maligned Lundy. Walker was about to assume his duties as Bishop of Derry when William invaded Ireland. He was among the party who first received William when he landed at Carrickfergus on June 14. He accompanied William to the Boyne were he was killed.