The county has two names, and the choice between them is rarely casual. To call it County Derry is to lean toward the older word - daire in Old Irish, doire in Modern Irish, both meaning oak-grove. To call it County Londonderry is to acknowledge a charter signed by James I on 2 March 1613, when the City of London's Livery Companies were granted the land in exchange for settling and defending it. The dispute is older than the United States, and locals still navigate it with the same tact people elsewhere use for politics or religion. Officially, this corner of Northern Ireland is 2,118 square kilometres of farmland, basalt cliffs, and ancient woodland along the north-west shore of Lough Neagh. About 252,000 people live here. The county flower is the purple saxifrage.
Near Coleraine, on a bluff above the River Bann, archaeologists in the 1970s uncovered the postholes of a building that had stood there approximately 9,000 years ago - a Mesolithic structure described as "perhaps the oldest recorded settlement within Ireland." Mountsandel pushes the date for organised human habitation here back to roughly 7000 BC, when hunter-gatherers built shelters and lit fires within sight of the river. The county is dense with megalithic remains beyond Mountsandel. The Ballygroll Prehistoric Landscape preserves a stretch of upland that has barely changed since the Bronze Age - stone circles, court tombs, standing stones, the architecture of belief made permanent in field stone.
What is now County Londonderry was originally County Coleraine, inhabited by the O'Cahan clan, tributaries to the powerful O'Neills of Tyrone. In the final years of Elizabeth I's reign, the English Crown seized the territory to break the O'Neill power. James I's 1613 charter then handed the area to the City of London - more precisely to The Honourable The Irish Society, an arm of the City corporation, who divided the land into twelve estates and assigned each to one of the Great Livery Companies. The Skinners' Company drew lot twelve and got the manor around Dungiven. The Drapers got Moneymore. The Fishmongers got Walworth. These London merchants were now landlords of farms they would never see. The new county was named for both London and Derry - an awkward compound that still divides opinion.
The county's main air gateway sits seven miles north of Derry near Eglinton, on a stretch of flat coastal plain that British bomber crews used during the war. City of Derry Airport (EGAE) now handles regular flights to Birmingham, Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London-Heathrow, Liverpool, and Manchester. EasyJet, Loganair, and Ryanair are the carriers most often spotted on the apron. Lough Foyle stretches east of the runway - a tidal estuary so vast that on a clear day the Donegal hills on the far shore look like a different country, which technically they are. The Republic of Ireland is fifteen minutes' drive from the terminal building.
The county runs from the Sperrin Mountains in the south to a coastline of basalt cliffs in the north. Lough Foyle marks the western edge, separating Northern Ireland from the Republic. Lough Neagh's north-west shore forms the south-east boundary. Translink Northern Ireland Railways runs an hourly service along the coast from Derry through Bellarena, Castlerock, and Coleraine to Belfast - one of the most scenic train rides in the British Isles, hugging cliffs above the Atlantic for long stretches. The Lough Foyle Ferry shuttles seasonally between Magilligan Point and Greencastle in Donegal, a quick crossing that saves an hour's drive around the head of the lough.
The 2021 census recorded 252,231 residents. Of these, 42.2% identified as Irish only, 24.8% as British only, 19.7% as Northern Irish only, and the rest in various combinations. It is one of four counties in Northern Ireland with a Catholic-background majority, at 61.3%. These numbers describe a place where the abstract politics of identity meet kitchen tables. The county is also home to two major University of Ulster campuses (headquarters at Coleraine, the Magee Campus in Derry), and one of the most prestigious youth football tournaments in Europe - the Northern Ireland Milk Cup, established in 1983, which brings clubs like Liverpool, Bayern Munich, and FC Barcelona to grounds in Coleraine, Limavady, Portstewart, and Castlerock every July.
Centred approximately 54.92°N, 6.85°W. The county runs from the Sperrin Mountains in the south to a 30-mile basalt coastline in the north, framed by Lough Foyle to the west and Lough Neagh to the south-east. Primary airport: City of Derry (EGAE), 7 nm north of Derry near Eglinton, serving Belfast, Dublin, and major UK hubs. Belfast International (EGAA) is 35 nm east-south-east, Belfast City (EGAC) 45 nm east. Cruising altitude offers superb views of Lough Neagh - the largest lake in the British Isles - and the Atlantic coast around Downhill and Castlerock. Weather varies fast; westerly fronts off the Atlantic can drop visibility within minutes.