Administrative Boundary of Derry City and Strabane

About Derry City and Strabane

Derry City and Strabane is a district council area in Northern Ireland. Covering approximately 1,283 square kilometres on the west bank of the River Foyle and the surrounding countryside, Derry City and Strabane had a population of approximately 150,000 at the 2021 Census. The district — created in 2015 by the merger of the former Derry City Council and Strabane District Council — contains the historic walled city of Derry/Londonderry, the only completely intact walled city in Ireland, and one of the best-preserved examples of a 17th-century planned city in the world. The Walled City Derry/Londonderry — the name of the city is itself a marker of the political and cultural divide: "Londonderry" is the name given by the Royal Charter of 1613 when the city was planted by the London guilds as part of the Ulster Plantation; "Derry" (from the Irish Doire, meaning "oak grove") has been used since St Columb founded his monastery here in 546 AD, and is the preferred usage among the nationalist community and in common speech; both names are in current official use — the city walls were built between 1613 and 1619 as part of the Ulster Plantation, making Derry/Londonderry one of the last walled cities to be built in Europe; the walls — approximately 1.5 kilometres in circumference and entirely intact — stand up to 8 metres high and between 7 and 9 metres wide at the top, making them walkable and forming one of the most complete circuits of city walls in Europe. The four original gates — Shipquay Gate, Ferryquay Gate, Butcher's Gate, and Bishop's Gate — each rebuilt in the 18th and 19th centuries, remain in use. The Siege of Derry (December 1688 – July 1689) — the Protestant garrison's resistance to the Jacobite army during the Williamite–Jacobite War, ending with the relief of the city after 105 days — remains a defining event in unionist cultural identity and is commemorated annually. Bloody Sunday and Reconciliation Bloody Sunday (30 January 1972) is one of the most significant and painful events of the Troubles: 14 civilians were killed and 13 injured (one of whom died later) when soldiers of the 1st Battalion Parachute Regiment opened fire on a peaceful civil rights march in the Bogside area of Derry. The event radicalized thousands of people in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. The Saville Inquiry (begun 1998, reported 2010) found that all of the killings were unjustified and unjustifiable, that none of the victims had been carrying weapons, and that many had been shot in the back while fleeing. The Bogside murals — including "Free Derry Corner" (a surviving gable end painted "You Are Now Entering Free Derry" in 1969) and the Bloody Sunday mural — form one of the most important collections of political street art in Ireland. Derry was UK City of Culture in 2013, catalysing significant cultural investment and regeneration. St Columb's Cathedral and Heritage St Columb's Cathedral (1633) is the oldest building in Derry still in use and the first cathedral built in Britain or Ireland after the Reformation. John Dunlap, born in Strabane, printed the first copies of the American Declaration of Independence in 1776. Amelia Earhart landed near Derry in 1932, completing the first solo transatlantic flight by a woman. GIS and Boundary Data The administrative boundary of Derry City and Strabane District Council is available for free download in GeoJSON and KML formats, sourced from the OSNI Open Data portal (Crown copyright 2024). Compatible with QGIS, ArcGIS, Mapbox, and Google Earth, the dataset supports walled city conservation, conflict heritage mapping, cultural regeneration planning, and demographic analysis across the local authority area.

📍 Administrative boundary of Derry City and Strabane county