Built from London, 1610 onwards
The Fishmongers' village
When James I divvied up Ulster after 1610, the twelve great livery companies of London were each handed a tract of land they'd never seen. The Fishmongers got Walworth and Ballykelly. They put up a castle in 1619 with a garrison of forty men, then leased the estate out for two hundred years to the Hamilton and Beresford families. When the lease finally ran out in the 1820s the company came back in and rebuilt — the Anglican church (dedicated 1795), the Presbyterian church (1827), the school, the manor. The planned single street of the village is theirs. None of them ever lived here.
RAF Ballykelly, 1941–1971
The runway that crossed the railway
The airfield opened in June 1941 as a Coastal Command base for the Battle of the Atlantic — Liberators flew anti-submarine patrols out over the North Atlantic from here. In 1943 they extended the main runway and ran it straight across the Belfast-Derry railway. A set of red flashing 'wig-wag' lights and gates controlled the crossing — and unusually, the trains had right of way over the aircraft. After the war it became home to Avro Shackletons of three squadrons. The last Shackleton left on 31 March 1971; the Army took over the next day as Shackleton Barracks. The base finally closed in March 2008.
6 December 1982
The Droppin' Well
The Droppin' Well was a pub and disco on the Main Street, popular with soldiers from the barracks across the road. On the night of 6 December 1982 the INLA planted a time bomb against a pillar inside. It brought the dance floor and the roof down on top of about 150 people. Seventeen died — eleven soldiers and six civilians, most of them local women in their teens and twenties. It was the deadliest INLA attack of the Troubles. Four INLA members were convicted in 1986. The site is gone; the memorial is at the old base gate.
A mile south, in the trees
Walworth Old Church
The parish church of Tamlaght Finlagan moved to Walworth in the mid-16th century. A church was built on the Walworth estate in 1622 and burned twice in the 17th century — once in the 1641 rising, again in 1689 by Jacobite soldiers retreating from the Siege of Derry. The ruin sitting in the field at Walworth townland today is what was left when the Fishmongers built the current Anglican church up in the village in 1795. The graveyard is still in use. The walls are worth the walk.
Ballykelly on the Belfast-Derry line
The station that closed, and might reopen
The railway still runs through — you can hear the Belfast-Derry trains from the main street — but the original Ballykelly station closed in September 1954. NI Railways are currently building a new passing loop here to lift service frequency on the line, and a feasibility study is looking at reopening a halt with park-and-ride. Until then, the nearest stations are Bellarena (10 minutes east) and Castlerock.