BELFAST to ARMOY
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Calgach was a Pict or Cruthni who became the first king of
The site of this early monastery eventually evolved into an Augustinian Abbey which was destroyed twice (1059 and 1136), it was abandoned and replaced by a medival church. Today the site is occupied by the beautiful gothic styled St Augustines Church, known as the 'Wee Chirch on the Walls', it was built in 1872 and designed by J.C. Ferguson. The site has an unbroken eccelastical history going back to the first settlement here by St. Columb.
You can find many traces of earlier man scattered in the landscape around
An account of Daire in 1600 by Sir Henry Docwra is as follows: "A place in the manner of an island, comprehending within it 40 acres of land, whereon were the ruins of an old abbey, a bishop's house, two churches, and at one of the ends of it an old castle; the river called Lough Foyle encompassing it on one side, and a bog most commonly wet and not easily passable, except in two or three places, dividing it from the mainland."
Docwra took Derry without opposition and set about building it into a defendable settlement, at the time Queen Elizabeth wanted the Foyle and Ballyshannon planted by Royalist to curb rebellion by the Gaelic lords.
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