The bombing
Bloody Monday, 1972
On 31 July 1972, three car bombs detonated in Claudy in quick succession — two on Main Street, one on Church Street. Nine civilians were killed: Kathryn Eakin (9, who had been cleaning the windows of her family's shop), Patrick Connolly (15), William Temple (16), Arthur Hone (38), Joseph McCluskey (39), Rose McLaughlin (52), Elizabeth McElhinney (59), David Miller (60) and James McClelland (65). Thirty were injured. Two of the bombers had driven on to Dungiven to phone a warning, but the local telephones there were out of order — an earlier IRA bomb had destroyed Claudy's own telephone exchange. By the time the first phone call got through, the first bomb had already gone off. The Provisional IRA never publicly admitted responsibility. A 2010 Police Ombudsman report concluded that the RUC believed Father James Chesney, a local Catholic priest, was the South Derry Brigade's quartermaster and director of operations, and that senior officers colluded with the Northern Ireland Office and the Catholic hierarchy to move him to a parish in the Republic rather than pursue charges. No one has ever been prosecuted for the bombing. The bronze memorial on Main Street, a kneeling girl by sculptor Elizabeth McLaughlin, stands at the spot where the first bomb went off.
4 January 1969
Burntollet Bridge
Three miles down the road towards Derry, on the Faughan, a People's Democracy civil rights march from Belfast was ambushed at Burntollet Bridge by a loyalist crowd of around 300, including off-duty members of the Ulster Special Constabulary. Stones, iron bars and nail-spiked sticks. The marchers were on the final day of the walk to Derry, having stopped overnight in Claudy. The attack is read as one of the events that pushed Northern Ireland into the Troubles proper. Civil rights veterans have campaigned for years for a plaque at the bridge. There still isn't one.
Clóidigh
The strong-flowing one
The Irish name Clóidigh means the strong-flowing one, or the one who washes — a reference to the rivers that meet here. The Glenrandal joins the Faughan at the foot of the village. Tradition has it that St Patrick founded a church at Cumber, the parish that contains Claudy, in the fifth century; an archbishop's visitation in 1397 records a parish church already long established on the same site. The current Church of Ireland building dates to 1757, with a small bell turret on the western gable. Older still: a Late Neolithic ritual site was uncovered during quarry works on the Glenshane Road, with a roundhouse and an isolated cremation burial dated to roughly 2,500–3,000 BC. People have been living at this river junction for a long time.
When the A6 left town
The bypass
For most of the twentieth century the A6 — the main road between Belfast and Derry — ran directly up Main Street. Lorries, coaches, the lot. The 25.5 km Dungiven-to-Drumahoe dualling, a £220m scheme delayed by Covid and finally opened to traffic on 6 April 2023, routed through traffic onto a new road north of the village. There's a new park-and-ride at Claudy off the dual carriageway. The village is quieter now than it has been in living memory. Locals are split on whether that is a relief or a slow problem. Footfall is down. So is noise.