Military connection

"The Ash family goes back over 400 years in the history of this area, and in fact probably is the longest-lived family in the City and the immediate environs. Nobody else except maybe the Dohertys, who were blow-ins from Inishowen and who burned the City to the ground in 1608, have that claim to have been here that long.

"The other side of the family, the Beresford family are one of the most distinguished families in British and Irish history. They go back to the Napoleonic Wars when one of the Generals serving in the Peninsula Campaign was Field Marshall Beresford, William Carr Beresford, who at one stage commanded the most famous of Irish regiments, the Connaught Rangers. You also have an Admiral Beresford who is of the family of the Marquises of Waterford. It actually is a fantastic history," he said.

He noted that the Beresford-Ashs are one of the four oldest Protestant families in Northern Ireland.

He said Thomas Ash's account of the Siege was "probably the most accurate of the three major indigenous accounts".

"The reason for that was that Ash wrote it as part of the job. Both Walker and McKenzie wrote theirs for immediate publication. Ash wrote his for the information of his family and for generations to come and it wasn't published for about 100 years or more after his death. He had a tremendous eye for detail and the eye of a soldier which gave us a much greater insight into the military history of the Siege than we get from either Walker or McKenzie."

After the Jacobites failed to take the City from the Williamites it was decided by James and his followers to burn all the Protestant homes in the district including the Ash family home and this is also recorded in the journal.

On the other side of the family Sir Tristram Beresford in 1613 gave the London prefix to the City, thinking that the move would make the Settlers feel at home, yet the late John Beresford-Ash was never one to flaunt his family's wealth of history and standing.

"He was a very quiet man in that sense. He was a reserved gentleman in every sense of the word," Mr Doherty said.

Ashbrook, the family's ancestral home near Tullyally on Londonderry's east bank, was originally a gift from Queen Elizabeth I to his ancestor, General Thomas Ash, in recognition of services rendered to the Crown in helping quash rebellion in Ireland.

Yet another ancestor was Elizabeth Ash, the wife of Michael Browning, the ill-fated captain of the Williamite flagship, The Mountjoy, who died as his ship attempted to break the boom before the famous Relief of Derry.