Mapping Plantation Derry heritage talk this week

The Friends of the Derry Walls - History and Heritage talk takes place on Thursday, March 8, at the Playhouse Theatre in Derry’s city centre.

In her talk, Dr Annaleigh Margey, author and lecturer in history at Dundalk Institute of Technology will discuss the place of the Walls in landscape and in perception, with a particular focus on the livery company maps of the ‘Londonderry Plantation.’

Near the end of 1618, Captain Nicholas Pynnar, the official Inspector of Fortifications in Ireland, was appointed to survey the progress of the Ulster Plantation and specifically, the Works and Plantation performed by the City of London in the City and County of ‘London-Derry’.

His report, dated March 28, 1619, provides the first official certification of the completeness of the Derry Walls.

“The Cittie of London Derry is now compassed about with a verie strong wall, excellentlie made and neatlie wrought, beinge all of good lyme and stone.”

This survey is supported by the first illustration of the complete city walls.

In 2019, the Friends of the Derry Walls will be marking the quadricentennial of the delivery of the Pynnar Survey to London and the first official certification of the completeness of the Derry Walls.

As a start-up charitable interest group, the Friends of the Derry Walls are looking for the public’s support and also their ideas to help them explore the legacy of one of Ireland’s most important national monuments.

A spokesperson for the Friends of the Derry Walls said the talk on Thursday will form part of this endeavour to unpack the story of the building of the Derry Walls as well as their enduring legacy, both physically and culturally.

The event is free but the organisers would be grateful if everyone attending could book their place in advance on www.thederrywalls.com/eventsAnnaleigh Margey is a Lecturer in History at Dundalk Institute of Technology. She studied for her BA and PhD at NUI, Galway. Her PhD research titled ‘Mapping during the Irish Plantations, 1550- 1636’, focused on the surveys and maps created by surveyors in Ireland during the decades of plantation.

She subsequently held an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship and a J.B. Harley Fellowship in the History of Cartography to continue this research at Trinity College Dublin.

More recently, Annaleigh has worked as a Research Fellow at the University of Aberdeen on ‘The 1641 Depositions Project’ and at the Institute of Historical Research, London where she conducted research on the property and charity of the Clothworkers’ Company in early modern London.

She has also worked as a researcher on a project at NUI, Maynooth and the National Library of Ireland focusing on the rentals and maps in the landed estates of Ireland collections in the library’s holdings. She has recently been awarded an R.J. Hunter Bursary to further her work on the plantations in Ireland, focusing specifically on the ‘Towns and the Londonderry plantation, 1609-1709: the urban network of a plantation county’.

Most recently, she has edited a book with her colleagues Elaine Murphy and Eamon Darcy on The 1641 Depositions and the Irish Rebellion, and will shortly publish another book Mapping Ireland, c.1550-1636: a catalogue of the early modern manuscript maps of Ireland with the Irish Manuscripts Commission. She has written several articles on early modern mapping in Ireland, particularly on Ulster, and on the 1641 depositions.