A Walk around Derry's Walls Trivia Quiz

Answer: Oak grove

Another Irish version of the city's name is Doire Cholmcille (the oak grove of Colmcille), reflecting the city's origins as a monastic settlement established by St. Colmcille in the 6th century. In the English language it's known to Nationalists as Derry but to many Unionists as Londonderry, to the 'politically correct' it's called 'Derry/Londonderry', and 'Stroke City' to the humorously ironic.

The city is also known as the 'Maiden City' to its Unionist population, commemorating the fact that despite several sieges throughout its history its defences were never breached. For a small city (population 83,652 in the 2001 census) it certainly has a lot of names!

Answer: City walls

Derry was the first planned city in Ireland - with four main roads leading off a central 'Diamond' - and is the only city in Ireland with its defensive walls completely intact. They were built between 1613-1619 by the Honourable The Irish Society, representing the London craft guilds which gave Derry the London prefix to its name, and the walls successfully resisted sieges of the city in 1641, 1649 and, most famously, for 105 days in 1689. Approximately one mile in length, with seven gates, and up to 35 feet wide at some points, it's still possible to walk along the walls for the entire circuit of the inner city centre - complete with 24 cannons including the most famous of all, 'Roaring Meg'.

Answer: Foyle

A fast-flowing tidal river, and one of Ireland's finest salmon-fishing rivers, the River Foyle marks part of the border between the North and South of Ireland, separating County Donegal in the South from parts of Counties Tyrone and Derry in the North.

After flowing through Derry city it comes to an end at the Foyle estuary on the shores of the Atlantic. Only about 500 of the city's 20,000 Protestant population still live on the Cityside where the majority of the city's 65,000 Catholic population live, so the river is a real and visible boundary.

Answer: Shirt making

Begun by William Scott in the city in 1831 originally as home-based outworker manufacturing, the shirt making industry was revolutionised by the beginnings of factory production - one of the first of these being Tillie & Henderson's which opened on the Foyle Road in 1857. By 1926 there were 44 shirt factories in the city directly employing 8,000 (mostly women) of the 45,000 population, with an additional 10,000 outworkers from surrounding districts. Male unemployment in Derry was particularly high.

In 'Das Kapital' Karl Marx drew attention to "the shirt factory of Messrs. Tillie at Londonderry..." Cheaper production costs in Asia from the 1920s led to the decline of the industry with the last local shirt factory closing in 2003. Tillie & Henderson's factory, an historic listed building, was demolished by a property developer and hotelier in January 2003, despite widespread opposition, shortly after a fire swept through the derelict building - bringing the end to an era.

Answer: James Craig, Viscount Craigavon

Along with Edward Carson, James Craig was an instrumental figure in mobilising Protestant opposition in the North of Ireland to the Home Rule Bill for Ireland which British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith had pushed through legislative stages in 1914. Craig and Carson formed a Protestant militia in 1913 called the Ulster Volunteer Force, and organised the illegal gun running of 30,000 German rifles and 4 million rounds of ammunition into the North of Ireland in April 1914 to arm this militia. When the British government backed down on its commitment to full Irish Home Rule after World War I, Craig became the first Prime Minister of a Northern Ireland state partitioned from the rest of Ireland.

He became Viscount Craigavon in 1927. The naming of Craigavon Bridge in this predominantly Nationalist city, in honour of such a controversial Unionist figure, symbolised the political domination exerted by the minority in the city.

Answer: Battle of the Bogside

Confrontations between Nationalists in the Catholic Bogside district and a Loyalist parade being held on the Derry walls above them by the Apprentice Boys of Derry (commemorating the Protestant defence of the city during the Siege of Derry in 1689) broke out on 12th August 1969.

The tension that spilled over was the consequence of two years of civil rights campaigning by Nationalists for equality of housing, jobs and an end to political gerrymandering. The overwhelmingly Protestant RUC police drove the Nationalist protesters back into the Bogside and then attempted to occupy it. Almost the whole community mobilised in the defence of the area against the hated RUC, resulting in three days of rioting which spread to other towns, particularly Belfast - where Catholic homes in Bombay Street were burned out by Loyalist mobs and the RUC. With the RUC exhausted and unable to enter the Bogside, the Unionist government asked the British government for troops, who arrived in Derry and Belfast on 15th August. 'The Troubles' had begun!

Answer: Parachute Regiment

This single event contributed more than any other to a growth of Catholic support for the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and its armed campaign against the British government over the next 25 years. A British tribunal of inquiry chaired by Lord Widgery in 1972 exonerated the Parachute Regiment and supported the claim that many of the 14 fatalities (another died from his injuries shortly afterwards) had been carrying guns and nail bombs at the time they were shot.

This was widely discredited (and eventually disclaimed by the British government itself), and the term 'widgery' became synonymous in Ireland with 'whitewash'.

A second British government inquiry chaired by Lord Savile was begun in 1998, and after lengthy delays its report was published in June 2010, making clear that those killed had been unarmed. British Prime Minister David Cameron apologised that day, on behalf of the British government, to the victims' families.

Answer: John Hume

John Hume was a founder member of the Social Democratic and Labour Party in 1970, which he led from 1979-2001, a Westminster MP from 1983-2005, and a member of the European Parliament from 1979-2004. His involvement in secret talks with Irish Republican leader Gerry Adams from the late 1980s is believed to have contributed to the IRA's ceasefire decision in 1994 and the beginning of the 'peace process' which led to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

As well as the Nobel Prize, which he shared with Upper Bann unionist MP David Trimble, John Hume is also a recipient of the Gandhi Peace Prize and the Martin Luther King Award.

Answer: That Petrol Emotion

'The Undertones', best known for their lead singer Feargal Sharkey and songs like "Teenage Kicks" and "Here Comes the Summer", broke up in 1983 with Sharkey going on to a solo career. Undertones guitarists John O'Neill and his brother Damian formed a new band, 'That Petrol Emotion', with a more political edge to their song lyrics than 'The Undertones' - the new band's name itself a reference to the petrol bombs that were a feature of the Derry riot scene.

The O'Neill brothers later left 'That Petrol Emotion' to reform 'The Undertones', this time without Feargal Sharkey.

Other famous singers from Derry include former Eurovision Song Contest winner Dana, and the second most beautiful 'Girls Aloud' singer, Nadine Coyle. (I had to find some way of including Cheryl Tweedy, the 'most beautiful' but with no connection to Derry, in this quiz!).

Answer: Harvey Milk

"The Town I loved So Well", written in the 1970s, is a haunting and nostalgic song of Phil Coulter's childhood in Derry, contrasted with his sadness at the effects of political conflict on the city. In October 1985, two years after his release from jail following a controversial 5-year manslaughter sentence, Dan White was found dead in his garage with a rubber hose connected to the car exhaust and the car engine running. Irish musician Paddy Reilly's famous rendition of Coulter's song was playing on a continuous loop in the car.

In November 1978, an embittered Dan White had gone into San Francisco city hall and shot dead Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. The story was dramatised in a 2008 film "Milk" starring Sean Penn.