"The Great Guns like Thunder, have shaken our Walls; the small shot hath poured upon us like a shower of hail; and the Bombs, like lightning, have ruin'd our Houses: we have seen Death in all its horrible shapes, and we are at ever Moment entertained with spectacles of Misery and Mortality."
So Preached the Rev Seth Whittle before the garrison of Londonderry in 1689, speaking of the horror and devastation caused by Jacobite artillery.
The Walls of Derry are roughly eight metres high and nine metres wide in the highest and widest points and build in 1619, to protect the new plantation city by the Honourable the Irish Society, an organisation made up of the guilds and livery companies of the City of London. There are numerous cannons of various shapes and sizes dotted around the walls. The oldest guns date from 1590, these are found on the wall between Magazine Gate and Shipquay Gate and are aimed at the Guildhall! They can be identified by a Tudor Rose and Crown emblem, the badge of the English Tudor dynasty, although these emblems are eroded they are recognisable.
The Cannon on Double Bastion (designated C1 and C6) are of a group of seven supplied by the City of London Guilds between 1641 - 42. These guns are Demi-culverins meaning they fired a shot weighing between 9 - 11 pounds! The City of Londonderry was a refuge for the Scottish and English Plantation settlers during the 1641 rebellion, however it was poorly defended, and the city wrote to the guilds who founded it to supply them with better defences. In response each Guild paid for a cannon to be made and sent specifically for the defence of Derry. It is likely they saw action in the siege. These Cannons are distinguished by the name of the guild who paid for them, engraved upon the barrel above the vent hole.
The two cannon on Double Bastion (C1 and C6) have the inscriptions: "Vintners, London, 1642" and "Fishmongers, London, 1642" C6 is named Roaring Meg and weighs 3955 pounds, it is unknown if any of the other cannons had names. Roaring Meg is famous from the Great Siege of 1689 when the city successfully held out against the Jacobite Army of the deposed King James II/VII for 105 days, making it one of the longest sieges in British and Irish history. To this day a hostile army has never set foot inside the walls which is why Derry is called the "Maiden City."
Note the picture is from an old postcard, a the cannon might look a little different today.
Double Bastion was originally called 'Prince Charles' Bulwark', during the Great Siege the defender erected a gallows here. In the 19th and 20th Centuries some of the cannon were used as bollards in the city centre, but fortunately their historic value was realized and they were salvaged and restored
The Geocache is a micro cache located very near Roaring Meg, enjoy and admire these cannons but remember they are historical artifacts so please treat them with the respect they deserve. This is spot has lots of tourists in the Summer including guided tours so please be discreet, and be careful when replacing the cache, to make sure others can reach it. The tieing your shoes trick might be needed to retrieve it discreetly .
A full walk around the walls which are 99% intact is about 1.5KM (roughly 1 mile) and should take no more than an hour (stopping at points of interest) if you want to enjoy the city walls more. Sources from the books Great Guns Like Thunder, the cannon from the city of Derry. and Derry-Londonderry, a walk around the walls with Richard Doherty and Tim Webster.