Derry's Walls arose from the violent remaking of Ulster in the early seventeenth century. The older settlement of Derry had grown around a monastery traditionally founded by Columba, but English expansion brought it into a contested frontier. In 1608 the Gaelic lord Cahir O'Doherty rebelled and burned the recently planted town. After suppressing the revolt, the Crown assigned the rebuilding of the area to the City of London and its associated livery companies. A new royal charter in 1613 incorporated the settlement as Londonderry, and the fortified city became a principal stronghold of the Plantation of Ulster.

The Irish Society financed the circuit of stone and earthen defenses, built mainly between 1613 and 1619 under Peter Benson. Roughly a mile in circumference, the walls enclosed a planned street grid centered on the Diamond. Four original gates controlled access, while projecting bastions supported artillery. The fortifications protected English and Scottish Protestant settlers, merchants, churches, and storehouses, but they also embodied the displacement of Gaelic landholders and the new colonial order imposed after the Nine Years' War and the Flight of the Earls.

The walls were tested during the Confederate Wars of the 1640s, but their defining event came during the struggle between the deposed Catholic king James II and the Protestant William III. In December 1688, thirteen apprentice boys shut Ferryquay Gate against troops loyal to James. A full Jacobite siege began in April 1689. Soldiers and thousands of civilians crowded behind the walls while bombardment, hunger, disease, and political division eroded the defense. James appeared outside the city and demanded submission, but the garrison refused. Governor Robert Lundy fled after arguing the position could not be held, and the Reverend George Walker and Major Henry Baker became leading defenders.

The siege lasted 105 days. A boom across the River Foyle prevented relief ships from reaching the city until 28 July, when the Mountjoy broke through under fire, accompanied by the Phoenix and protected by the Dartmouth. Food entered the starving city, and the Jacobite army withdrew on 1 August. The survival of the unbreached circuit gave Derry the title “Maiden City.” It also made the walls a potent symbol within Protestant and unionist historical memory, commemorated by the Apprentice Boys of Derry and repeatedly contested in a divided society.

New Gate, Castle Gate, and Magazine Gate were added as the city expanded, while older entrances were altered. The walls ceased to be a modern military defense but remained a vantage point during later unrest, including the Troubles, when the surrounding districts became sites of protest and violence. Conservation restored cannon, masonry, and the continuous walkway. Today the circuit preserves evidence of plantation, siege, urban growth, and contested remembrance. Its importance lies not only in military survival but in the way one enclosure has carried sharply different meanings for communities shaped by colonization, religion, and political conflict. The walls also shaped the physical division between the old city and later neighborhoods beyond the gates. Murals, marches, memorials, and tourism continue to place the seventeenth-century circuit inside present-day debates over the city's name and identity. Its intact walkway is therefore both a rare fortification and an active public space where history is performed.