Boundary Marker

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Boundary marker of 1864 which was moved from its orginal location on the opposite side of the road post-1973.

Historical information

This boundary post is one of a series of that marked the limits of the jurisdiction - as set out in 1864 - of the then Municipal Corporation of Londonderry. The Corporation had applied to Parliament for permission to extend the municipal borough in late 1863, stating that ‘the great number of dwellings erected, and the consequent increase in population outside the present boundary render it necessary that the sanitary conveniences and municipal regulations should be extended to those localities’, and under the ‘Londonderry Improvement Act’ of the following year the city limits were extended to include the newly populated areas highlighted in the application.

In late September 1864 it was reported that ‘the tender of Mr. Thomas Miles to supply metal boundary pillars’ had been accepted by the Corporation. Thomas Miles appears to have been a business associate of William Coppin (1805-95), the noted Derry-based sailor, shipbuilder and inventor who had established a foundry off Strand Road in 1840. Coppin’s maker’s mark appears on the base of one of the other surviving ‘1864’ posts on Buncrana Road, and although now obscured by the rise in the level of the tarmac, it is probable that this post has an identical mark on its base also.

Map evidence dating from 1873 until 1973 indicates that the post originally stood on the opposite side of the road, but was moved to its present location at some point after this

References- Primary sources
1 ‘Derry Journal’ – 4 November 1863, p.2; 14 November 1863, p.1; 20 July 1864, p.4; 28 September 1864, p.2; 24 April 1866, p.3
2 OS town plan of Londonderry -1873
3 OS maps 6-inch county series, Londonderry sheet 14 - 1904, 1932, 1948; IG series sheet 26 - 1961-62, 1973, 1984

Secondary sources
4 Malley, Annesley and McLaughlin, Mary, ‘Captain William Coppin “Neptune’s brightest star”’, (The Foyle Civic Trust, Derry, 1992)
5 https://www.dib.ie/biography/coppin-william-a2031 (accessed 31 October 2023)

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

This structure is of insufficient interest to warrant a full survey. Boundary marker of 1864 which was moved from its orginal location on the opposite side of the road post-1973.