River Foyle | Spinning Compass

Today we walked across the Peace Bridge, a beautiful foot and cycle bridge built in 2011 to commemorate the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that brought an uneasy, but workable, peace to Northern Ireland. The bridge connects Derry’s west and east banks.

The west bank is the historic part of Derry with its walled city and the Bogside. It’s predominantly Catholic and Nationalist, but not completely. (Nationalists want Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland to unite into one island nation.)

view of the west side, from the east side

The east bank is the newer part of the city and is mostly Protestant and Unionist, but not exclusively. (Unionists want Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom.)

view of the east side, from the west side

As you can see, the bridge connecting east and west is hugely symbolic.

I love the contemporary design. To me it says this peace is new and fresh. Forget past injustices, anger, and failed treaties. We are living in a different era now. Our eyes are on the future.

So, Marcus and I are walking across this bridge that is shared by east and west, pedestrians and cyclists. The deck of the bridge is curved and has two different surfaces. There’s a wider, paved path, and off to one side a narrower path made of metal slats that run contrary to the overall direction of the bridge. We discuss the two paths as we walk. Is the narrow path for bikes or pedestrians? we wonder. We decide it’s for bikes and the wider, larger path is for pedestrians because there are more of them. So we keep to the wide side, which is important to cyclists so they don’t have to brake or stop for pedestrians, and important to pedestrians so they don’t get run down by a bike.

Part way across the bridge, I notice our pedestrian side is getting narrower. The bike strip is intruding into the pedestrian space, effectively dividing it into two pedestrian paths. Eventually there is not enough room on either side of the bike path for two people to walk side by side. What do we do now? I wonder. Should I walk on one side of the bike path and Marcus on the other? Or should we walk single file on the same side? Either way, it would be impossible to have a conversation. I find myself getting annoyed. Why would the designers of the bridge intentionally divide the majority of its users and put them at a disadvantage?

Aha moment: Was this invasive cycle path design deliberate, to make a point?

By the time we get to the other bank, the cycle path has shifted all the way to the other side of the bridge deck, and we are once again enjoying a nice, wide pedestrian path…from a different vantage point.

Maybe I’m reading too much into this, as I’m sure most people just ride or walk wherever they want without a care in the world. Even so, that kind of peace of mind is priceless.

Derry or Londonderry? Irish or British? Nationalist or Unionist? Catholic or Protestant? It’s complicated.

There is so much extraordinary history here, part of which is my own personal history. About 20 years ago my sister, the family genealogist, discovered that our paternal grandmother’s parents emigrated to New York from Londonderry in the late 1800s. Until that time, we had no idea we had Irish blood. My great-grandparents’ surnames were Fife and Gilmour. You won’t find either of those on keychains in Irish souvenir shops. So how did they get to Ireland?

the city walls are one mile in circumference and 12 to 35 feet thick

First, let’s get this Derry-Londonderry thing straight. Which is it? The name of the original Irish settlement was Doire (DUR-a), meaning oak grove. The English, after they arrived in the 12th century, called it Derry. And in 1613, when King James I granted a charter for the development of a British city here, he tacked on the London part to acknowledge the London guilds who were financing the project. Today it’s called Derry-Londonderry, or Derry, or Londonderry, whichever satisfies your political outlook. I call it Derry because it’s less of a mouthful and easier to type.

So why would a British king want to build a new city in Ireland? As the Protestant king of a country that just a century before had been Catholic, and was still immersed in an often bloody religious reformation, his territory of Ireland was a bit too Catholic, uncivilized, and hostile for his taste. How better to tame them than by planting some proper, loyal, Presbyterian Scots amongst them? James started in Ulster in the north, the most resistant of the Irish provinces, with what became known as the Ulster Plantation (for the planting of settlers, not crops). We call them Scots-Irish in the US. In Ireland they’re the Ulster Scots.

St. Augustine’s Church, within the walls

In a remarkable feat of early urban planning, the London-backed The Honorable The Irish Society (that’s not a typo) built a beautiful walled city for the Scots in just five years, the only completely walled city remaining in Ireland today. Why was it walled? To keep out the unruly, and justifiably angry, native Irish whose lands had been confiscated to build the city. The British took the best, high ground on the River Foyle, relocating the Irish clans to the surrounding bogland.

So how did James expect to assimilate the staid Scots with the wild Irish with a 12-to-35-foot thick stone wall between them? Well, in my humble opinion, that was just the beginning of the Troubles between Protestants and Catholics in Derry that surfaced again and again for 350 years, at times most violently. But that’s a story for another day.

I believe my great-grandparents are descendants of the Ulster Scots. Based on a tip from a local genealogist, my sister has found the Irish parishes they were from and will continue to trace their branches of the family tree as far as she can.

Ebrington Square, former army barracks on the east side of the River Foyle

So am I Scots or Irish? I’m sure in the 250 years, from the time the Scots settled in Ireland until my great-grandparents’ emigrated to America, there was a little assimilation going on. Don’t you think? I would say I’m both, but then again it’s complicated.