Fate of Shipquay Gate is to be known soon (1964)

It was thought that the future shape of the gate – Shipquay Gate – would largely depend on “the whim of an electronic computer” which was working out the results of a recent census of the city’s traffic.

The gate, which spanned one of the city’s main thoroughfares, had been the centre of controversy for some five years since a Nationalist proposal to widen it was first discussed by the corporation.

More recently, noted the News Letter, a similar proposal, put forward by Unionist member Councillor G C Austin to relieve the bottleneck had been defeated.

The scheme to widen the gate and build pedestrian ways through the wall found no favour with other Unionist members.

A Nationalist member, Councillor James Doherty, said his party did not want to bring the matter up before the corporation again until after the city’s traffic plan was made known.

He said: “While the gate in its present form only adds to the traffic congestion in the city, we feel there is a definite danger of our motives being regarded as political if we bring it up now.

The problem was, he said, essentially one of traffic control and pedestrian safety.

One man who felt the gate should be left alone was Alderman G S Glover, Unionist.

“Londonderry is unique in that the walls are complete. If you start knocking them about they would end up as brass plaques on the footpaths saying ‘This is where Derry’s walls were’.”

While it was true, he said, that the Shipquay Gate was in 1964 “not now in its original form”, the present gate was “very old”.

“A lot of people feel that to produce a replica of the original in 1964 would be a bit ‘off’,” he added.