Two million gallons of whisky
Smoke from illicit poteen whisky stills used to waft over the walls from the Bogside. Legal distilleries opened in the Waterside and in the Bogside in the 1820s. Watt's Abbey Street distillery became the largest in Ireland producing two million gallons of grain whisky a year by the 1880s. The works was as large as two football pitches, its seven-storey high building still being the city's tallest after St Columb's Cathedral. The distillery closed in 1921.

Tyrconnell wins the race
Tyrconnell and Favourite were two of Watt's most popular brands. In 1876 the family entered a racehorse called Tyrconnell in the Irish Classic 'National Produce Stakes'. It won at odds of 100 to 1. Watt's celebrated the victory with a special Tyrconnell label. Tyrconnell was one of the biggest selling whisky brands in the USA in the early 20th century.

'Bogg side'
The city was once an island. 'It lies in the form of a bow bent, whereof the bog is the string and the river the bow.' (Sir Henry Docwra, 1600). By the 19th century the bog was little more than a stream known as Mary Blue's Burn. Especially after the potato famines of the 1840s the Bogside was the home of poor Catholic families from the country who found work in the city as weavers, sailors and dockers.

Clancarty at the gate
The saying - 'a Clancarty will knock at the gates of the city' - nearly came true. Towards the end of the 1689 siege Lord Clancarty arrived with fresh troops. He crossed the bog from the Jacobite camp on the Creggan hills, lobbed grenades into the ditches and demanded wood to burn down Butcher Gate. Miners were digging tunnels into the cellars below. The defenders crept along the walls from Bishop's Gate to surprise the attack, firing on the troops from above. Thirty five Jacobites were killed and Clancarty never knocked.

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