In the 1630´s Richard Boyle declared "Bandon Bridge is more in compass with Londonderry, and that my walls are thicker and stronger than theirs," before asserting, "that while the surrounding country harbours wolves, thieves and rebels, God as ever praised, Bandon is as Civil a plantation as most in England, being five miles round in all effect planted with English Protestants.
 
Bandon established a strong Protestant identity that was to prevail for centuries. But what exactly lay Behind the wall, long after the physical fortificaton was torn down in 1689? Was Bandon a Protestant ideological island, unique in Southern Ireland?
 
Behind the Wall shows how, over four centuries, Protestant and Catholic politics and cultures sometimes clashed and at other times united. It charts the rise of nationalism and the decline of unionist power. It sheds light, too, on some of the darker events of the 1920´s, behind the wall in this prominent west Cork town.