Derry D-Day hero: Field Marshal Montgomery and the maiden city

The field marshal’s ancestors, Mr Doherty said, were Normans and by the 17th Century had made their way to Ireland.

Some had settled in County Down, others, the field marshal’s branch of the family, in Killaghtee, County Donegal, near the town of Killybegs.

By the late 18th Century, Samuel Law Montgomery, Monty’s great-grandfather, had ventured north and settled in Derry.

There, Mr Doherty said, he traded as a wine merchant, making a small fortune, marrying and raising a family.

His son Robert, Monty’s grandfather, was born in Derry and schooled at Foyle College. He became a noted colonial administrator in India.

In 1774, Samuel bought an estate close to the shores of Lough Foyle, some 19 miles from the city, at Moville in County Donegal.

This was long before Ireland’s partition and Donegal’s Inishowen peninsula was a natural hinterland to the city of Derry.

The estate would become New Park, the Montgomery family home until the middle of the 20th Century.

Mr Doherty said the young Monty “certainly regarded New Park as home, he was certainly much happier there than in London”.