"The Great Guns Like Thunder" details the background to the city "big guns" and some of the, literally, ground-breaking events they were involved in.

Author and archaeologist Dr Brian Scott says the city's cannon represents "one of the most important assemblages of ordnance anywhere in Europe".

The conservation and restoration of Derry's historic cannon was identified in 2005 as a priority tourism development project by Derry City Council. With a mandate from the Council's Development Committee, civil officials subsequently gained both endorsement and financial assistance from the Department of Enterprise Trade and Investment and the European Union Structural Funds to undertake this important work.
With the 400th anniversary of the Plantation of Ulster fast approaching, the restoration of the guns was the first key investment in making the primary stronghold of the Plantation ready for the quadricentennial celebrations.

As part of the Walled City Signature Project Action Plan, Council's Economic Development Section commissioned a full conservation and restoration project for the ordnance located on the walls. The project also included historical research to identify the types and origins of the various pieces, and the results form the body of the new book.
The main group of twenty cannon comprises pieces of English origin which date from the later-sixteenth century to the period immediately before April or May of 1642. As such, they are not merely of importance to the history of the City itself, but assume major significance for Ireland and Britain, as well as for continental Europe as a whole. The guns were placed, at various times in the earlier seventeenth century, in a city that was the focal point in the militarised landscape of the Lough Foyle area of north-western Ulster, a result of English determination finally to bring the whole of the region under Crown control.

Overall, the assemblage falls into four main parts, the first being two guns which were cast pre-1600 and can be linked directly to the military campaigns of Sir Henry Docwra between 1600 and 1603. At least one was cast by Thomas Johnston, gunfounder to Elizabeth I, as witnessed by his initials on the barrel.

Second are those which, on stylistic grounds fall into the period c. 1615–1630 and quite possibly c. 1618–1624. Of these, two (possibly three) can be attributed with some certainty to the works of the Browne dynasty of Royal Gunfounders and, in one case, specifically to John Browne, the first of that name. They include also pieces with the shield of the City of London cast in.

Third come seven engraved guns, which were purchased by the Great Companies of London for the City between March and May of 1642, and belong to an original batch of fifteen for which there is an excellent documentary record. In fact, many of the seventeenth–century pieces again can be linked to the Browne dynasty, whose works produced thousands of cast iron guns in the period roughly 1590–1670. They supplied both the state and private markets and, while examples of their work have been found as far afield as Australia and India, the cannon in the City represent the largest group of cast-iron survivals of the prodigious output of their works in Kent.

Finally, we have a varied selection of guns dating from the last decades of the eighteenth century through possibly to the 1820s, with products of the Wilkinson Bersham works prominent.

From Derry to Oz

The process of uncovering the history of the cannon took the research team from the City Walls, to the laboratories of the Universities of Ulster and Oxford and the State Laboratory of the Irish Republic at Celbridge, County Dublin, from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries iron smelting furnaces and foundries of southern England, as far afield as the Great Barrier Reef of Australia.

The team followed the trail from the Baltic at Riga to Kingston, Ontario in Canada, from the Virginia and Bermuda colonial settlements to the Forbidden City of Beijing and Karatsu Castle in Japan, along the ramparts of Mehrangarh Fort at Jodhpur in India, and to Mozambique in Africa.

Brian Scott - formerly Keeper of Conservation at the Ulster Museum and, among other things, the man responsible for the conservation and restoration of the Spanish Armada material from La Trinidad Valancera now housed in Derry's Tower Museum - says the entire project has been more than worthwhile.

"The guns are now restored and displayed to best advantage both for the citizens and for tourists," he told the 'Journal this week. "This is one of the most important assemblages of ordnance anywhere in Europe, because we know who made most of them, who were the merchants who sold them and organised form them to be brought to the city, where and how they were made.

"Also, they tell us much about the development of metal casting in the 17th century and how this technology was on its way to being one of the most important of the later Industrial Revolution. Also, the technology of boring out cannon barrels played a pivotal role in the development of the steam engine."

Local historian Annesley Malley says of the new book: "For many years the cannon on the City Walls have been waiting for their story to be told. This well-researched
book covers not only their secret history, but explains how cannon were originally cast and fired. The whole story of the restoration project by Derry City Council is well documented and beautifully presented in this splendid volume."

Beautiful publication

This is a view shared by Brian Lacey, of the Discovery Programme in Dublin and a former head of Museum Services with Derry City Council: "To have restored the important collection of cannon on Derry's City Walls would have been achievement enough. To have accompanied this with such a beautiful and detailed publication outlining the restoration process, the history of the guns and their national and international significance, is absolutely outstanding. The Historic City has truly been magnificently served."

'The Great Guns Like Thunder: The Cannons from the City of Derry", by B.G. Scott, R.R. Brown, A.G. Leacock & C.J. Salter, will be launched at the Verbal Arts Centre, Bishop Street Within, on Saturday, May 10 at 10.30 a.m.