New book on Limavady to be launched

FEW places in Northern Ireland can match the wealth of history that exists in the Limavady Borough. That's one of the many interesting details to emerge from Douglas Bartlett's 'Illustrated History of Limavady'.

Most people will be familiar with the highly important Broighter Gold and the Drumceatt Convention, even Canice and Colmcille. Indeed the stories of Danny Boy and O'Hampsey, Thackeray and Massey are well known locally, but less well known is the connection with the Nobel Prize winning American author, John Steinbeck, or the influential nationalist John Mitchel. The Ulster Museum has the Dungiven Costume on display beside the Largentea Pottery and the new Civic Centre would have no problem filling a floor with local finds and artefacts of national importance. Bartlett's book goes right back to the Prehistoric Period and places the wider borough in a national and international setting. Written in an easy to read style it is packed with over 100 high quality colour and black and white photographs, maps and sketches. Ideal for the tourist and for the knowledgeable local, the book dusts off, and polishes up, for a new generation, the rich history of our region. While many of the tales and legends that are so much a part of our local heritage, get an outing in the book, it is the objective eye of the historian that sets the tone of this work. As the author writes himself in the introduction, the history of Limavady and the Roe Valley is indeed 'a past worth sharing.'

Douglas Bartlett's book 'Illustrated History of Limavady' will be launched on June 3, and available from Books Upstairs, and Limavady High School priced at 16.