The wall
The words ‘You are now entering Free Derry’ were first daubed on the gable end of 33 Lecky Road on 5 January 1969, after a night of rioting and police attacks in the Bogside. Liam Hillen held the brush; the phrase itself was Eamonn McCann’s, lifted from the ‘You are now entering Free Berkeley’ sign of the American Free Speech Movement. When Home Secretary James Callaghan came to Derry that August, the wall was repainted in proper black lettering by John ‘Caker’ Casey, and that is more or less the wall you photograph today. The terrace it once ended has long gone; road works left the gable standing alone in the middle of the junction, and in 2000 the city council had it made a national monument.
The corner itself is a two-minute stop. What gives it weight is everything around it, so don’t just take the photo and leave.
Free Derry, 1969–1972
For three years the Bogside and Creggan ran as a self-declared no-go area, barricaded against the police and army, with its own street patrols and a pirate station, Radio Free Derry. Two events from that period are why the world knows the name. In August 1969 the Battle of the Bogside, a three-day riot, sealed the area off. And on 30 January 1972, on the streets a short walk from this wall, British soldiers shot dead thirteen unarmed civilians during a civil-rights march; a fourteenth died of his wounds later. It became known as Bloody Sunday. The autonomous area was finally dismantled that July during Operation Motorman.
The People’s Gallery murals
If you only do one thing here beyond the wall, walk the People’s Gallery along Rossville Street. The twelve large murals were painted by the Bogside Artists – brothers Tom and William Kelly with Kevin Hasson – and they are the real reason to come. The first and most famous, the Petrol Bomber (1994), shows a boy in a gas mask during the Battle of the Bogside, painted for its 25th anniversary; others include a tribute to Bloody Sunday showing men carrying the body of Jackie Duddy, and a portrait of Che Guevara, whose family had Galway roots. Nearby stand memorials to the 1981 hunger strikers and to the Provisional IRA’s Derry Brigade.
The wall is also a working noticeboard – it gets repainted regularly for causes local and international, so what’s on it when you visit may have nothing to do with 1969.
Visiting
This is a residential neighbourhood and a memorial, not an attraction laid on for tourists, and some visitors find the murals’ politics uncomfortable. Treat it accordingly: ask before photographing people or homes, and keep that in mind on commemoration days.
The corner is free and open at all hours, a 10 to 15 minute walk north from the city centre down towards the Bogside. Street parking on Rossville Street is tight and fills fast, so it’s easier to park in the centre and walk. The wall is at street level on flat pavement, though the surrounding streets run to cobbles and inclines. It sits within easy reach of the Peace Bridge and the 400-year-old city walls if you want to string a half-day together.
For the context the wall alone can’t give, the Museum of Free Derry is a few minutes away on the Bogside – about £7 in, and worth it for the archive, the personal artefacts and the Bloody Sunday material.