[Extract from the City of Derry list by W S Ferguson, A J Rowan
and J J Tracey, published by the Ulster Architectural Heritage
Society in 1970 (reprinted 1973).]
The city of Londonderry, rising on the banks of the river Foyle,
is bounded on its east side by the broad curve of the river, not
quite five miles upstream from its estuary and the broad reaches
of Lough Foyle. It is set on a roughly regular hill whose axis
runs from north-east to south-west, and on the west, bounding
the city on the other side from the river, lies low marshy ground,
known as Bogside. The name of the city, always popularly called
Derry, is taken from the Irish Doire which means "a place
of oaks". The oaks, or at any rate a thick wood, grew naturally
on this mound between bog and river, with wide views across the
rising country towards the Sperrin mountains, the hills of Donegal,
and the Inishowen peninsula. It is a rich fertile country modelled
with broad, sweeping contours, and it was here on the firm dry
hill crowned with trees that St. Columb founded his first abbey
in 546. Derry's history goes back at least to that date.
The architectural monuments in the city hardly suggest its antiquity.
St. Columb's monastery was in too crucial a site to develop indefinitely
in peace. It was immediately accessible from the river and estuary,
and as long as it remained the centre of a religious community
it was the first place to be attacked by any ambitious invader.
When in more modern history Derry became a town and centre of
commerce, its position commanding the river crossing and with
easy access to the sea gave it a strategic importance that inevitably
brought further attacks. As a result the history of the city is
one of recurrent destruction from 783, when the Danes burnt the
abbey, to the end of the seventeenth century. The Great Siege
by James II in 1689 is no more (and no less) than the final period
to a pattern that had lasted 1000 years.
Despite this history of intermittent attack, the religious community
at Derry thrived. In 1162 a new abbey church, 240 feet long, was
begun by the Augustinian Bishop Flaithbhertagh O'Brolchain (Bradley),
and from then on the old church of St. Columb became known as
the Black Church. In the thirteenth century Derry gained a Cistercian
nunnery, in 1274 a Dominican abbey, and at an unrecorded date
a Franciscan friary. This notable collection of medieval architecture
survived the middle ages intact. The raids of local chiefs and
opportunist English adventurers brought havoc but rarely did long
term damage: walls might be 'slighted' but they would not be demolished,
and so the church architecture was maintained.
It was the Tudor reassertion of English power in Ulster that brought
an end to the medieval appearance of Derry. In 1565, on Shane
O'Neill's rebellion, seven foot companies and one troop of horse
were sent to the town as garrison. The year following, however,
an accidental explosion of gun powder in the cathedral, which
the English had converted into an arsenal, rendered the town untenable.
Elizabeth's troops withdrew, leaving the medieval buildings largely
in ruins, and so they remained until the end of the century. Then
in 1599 the strategic position of Derry forced the government
to re-occupy and fortify the city, and on 22 May 1600 it was taken
by Sir Henry Docwra, who, like most previous commanders, came
up Lough Foyle to the head of the river estuary and then proceeded
on the town. Docwra, to obtain materials to fortify Derry, demolished
the ruins of its medieval buildings, leaving only the tall round
tower to the cathedral belfry that was to give its name to the
Long Tower district of the town. Through this act of what must
have seemed legitimate destruction, Docwra became both the founder
of modern Derry and the eradicator of its past. Of the gaelic
community and medieval city nothing now remains, except some pieces
of famous local lore: St. Columb's well (no longer the pellucid
spring that refreshed the sixth-century saint, but a metal pump);
St.Columb's stone nearby; and St. Columb's Walk, a curving street
of nineteenth-century cottages.
In many ways Docwra's city suffered a similar fate to that of
its predecessor. The earthwork fortifications he erected were
overrun by Sir Cahir O'Doherty in 1608. Then in 1613, under Charter
from James I, the city of London became responsible for the settlement
of Derry, which then gained the prefix 'London', and between 1614
and 1618 Londonderry's walls were built. The plan of the city
had the functional simplicity of a Roman military camp. The long
rectangular enclosure had a central gate in each side with cross
streets meeting in an open square or diamond, and minor streets
ran across the shorter side above and below the square. By 1622
over 100 houses existed within the walls and a small T-shaped
market house had been built in the central diamond. The community
within the walls had to make do with a patched medieval fragment,
St. Augustine's Abbey, for its church, but between 1628 and 1633
a new cathedral was built, in Planters' Gothic style, at the head
of the town in the south-east corner of the defence work.
It was this city with its new-built cathedral that was attacked
by the Irish in 1641. Seven years later during the civil war it
declared, not surprisingly considering its London bias, for Parliament.
On each occasion the siege that followed was unsuccessful, though
in 1648 the city was only saved from starvation by a supply of
food sent from Scotland. The last siege of Derry began on 26 April
1689 and was to continue for 105 days. This time the besieging
army of James II had taken the precaution of throwing a boom across
the river to prevent the approach of relief ships to the town.
As James did not have enough engineers to storm the walls, the
city was to be starved out. Yet once again the siege was unsuccessful.
The boom across the Foyle was broken by the supply ship Mountjoy,
and two days later James raised the siege. In August 1689 Derry
was still victorious but the effect of the three sieges was to
reduce the town's buildings to rubble. The market house in the
Diamond was destroyed by shells; the cathedral tower, commandeered
as a gun emplacement during the siege, was hit and had to be rebuilt;
the walls and gates were severely damaged.
An architectural history of Derry cannot really begin until
after the siege of 1689, when the city settled down to a less
stirring era of re-construction. The first building of significance,
the New Market House, was built in the Diamond on the site of
its predecessor in 1692. It was a rectangular structure with short
cross arms at the south end, dignified by an attempted Classical
Order with an open arcade on the ground floor and assembly rooms
above. Meal and potatoes from the surrounding area were bought
and exchanged within its open arcades, and it continued as the
exchange for over 130 years.
Throughout the eighteenth century Derry, like the rest of Ireland,
was to suffer the economic stagnation that a system of absentee
owners imposed. The city was tied to the London companies through
the Irish Society that owned the land. The corporation was self-elected
and suffered from the defects inherent in such bodies. Development
was partial and slow. For the first half century all the main
functions of the town were easily contained within its walls.
The quays at this time were much closer to the city, for the shallows
created by the bend in the river Foyle before the north east face
of the walls had not been filled in. An irregular pattern of wharves,
jetties and the shipquay itself, stuck out into the river, gradually
filling up the shallows as the century progressed; but this process
too was slow. In 1788 the river still came up to the East Water
Bastion, in front of which "The New Walk", ultimately
to become part of Foyle Street, had just been constructed. For
most of the eighteenth century, Shipquay Street, the steep hill
leading from the quays up to the Diamond, was the centre of the
city's trade. In its lower section, conveniently near the wharves,
what seems to have been a Customs House was erected in 1741, and
this was the most ambitious building that had been built in Derry
to that date. It is a tall brick house, whose scale and character
compare with early eighteenth century architecture in Dublin,
and indeed it would not even seem out of place in the contemporary
Cavendish-Harley and Grosvenor estates in London. Its lugged doorcase
with segmental pediment is probably the earliest piece of Georgian
design left in Derry, and in the hall it retains most of the original
panelling together with the mangled remains of a delicate rococo
staircase and the date surrounded in a wreath of acanthus. The
rest of Shipquay Street is a little later. In 1772 the Derry Journal
offices were built at the top of the street, but the high plain
facades of all the buildings and the fenestration, even where
the walls have been stuccoed over, proclaim their eighteenth-century
origins. This one street preserves, more precisely than any other,
the character and sense of mercantile enterprise that was the
mid-Georgian town.
Bishop Street leading to the high south end of the walled city
was less concerned with trade. Its development was less compact,
with haphazard openings behind the street frontages to the Bishop's
house and garden, the free school and St. Augustine's Chapel of
Ease on the west, and to the Cathedral and Church yard on the
east. By 1788, however, the cathedral side of the street from
the Diamond to Bishop's Gate had been filled in completely. Scaffolding
surrounded the gate itself, to leave it on the centenary of the
siege the following year, as a bold triumphal arch with martial
trophies and a face on its keystone staring southward ever vigilant.
The most impressive building of the street inside was probably
the Irish Society House that had taken its place in the row with
a solid three-storey stone front in 1768.
This year, 1768, marks a change in Derry's architectural history,
for in it Frederick Augustus Hervey, later to be the 4th Earl
of Bristol, was translated from the see of Cloyne to the very
rich Bishopric of Derry. Hervey spent much of his money in the
city and county, and both benefited. He had already travelled
widely, especially in Italy, and his advent brought a new conception
of the role of architecture to the city by the Foyle. His predecessor,
William Barnard, had rebuilt the chapel of St. Augustine as a
small Classical hall-church with a Diocletian window and pediment.
Hervey proceeded to restore the cathedral, to build a tall ashlar
spire on the tower, completely to redesign the Bishop's palace,
and to erect many new churches throughout the diocese. He had
too a firm grasp of what would now be called Political Economy.
He advocated religious freedom and his schemes for agricultural
improvement and for new roads, and his extensive search for coal,
were all calculated for the good of Derry. In 1770 the corporation
presented the Bishop with the Freedom of their city.
By the 1780's Derry had expanded beyond the walls. Colonel Campsie's
orchard below the east wall, whose pear trees had provided a route
for the escape of the traitorous Governor Lundy in 1689, still
remained an open space, now belonging to a Mr. Patterson. But
the triangle of land between it, the walls and the river had been
built up, with a curving street of houses and shops stepping down
to the Ferry crossing. This became Bridge Street, the centre of
the town's skilled trades with printers, dyers, cutlers, glaziers
and cabinetmakers working there. A row of cottages now skirted
the lower slopes of the west wall, running down from Butcher's
Gate to the 'Gullet' dock (long since built over by Waterloo Place);
and another line ran back into the Bogside. Here linen industries
were established with clothes brokers and rope makers all concentrating
in the west of the town. Ribbons of development had begun to fringe
the other main routes out of Derry: the Long Tower, Howard Street
and St. Columb's Wells were all being built up. By 1788 the southern
half of Nailer's row already hugged the walls, and a substantial
part of Bishop Street Without was developed as far at least as
the Bishop's own gardens on the level of the hill. Here, on the
site of St. Columb's College, the Earl Bishop had laid out a bowling
green with walks, lawns and a grove of Spanish chestnut trees.
The stump of an old round windmill was converted into a Pigeon
House and on the brow of the hill a small Ionic casino was built
overlooking the meadows to the west, in front of Creggan's "Bluebell
Hill"....
[The City of Derry list contains a lengthy architectural history
of the city, of which this is only the beginning; there is also
a biographical appendix on Derry architects].
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to Index
The first town hall was erected in the Diamond by the Londoners
at a cost of £500. It was destroyed during the the siege.
Another hall was established there in 1692. It was decided to
change the site of the town hall and in 1887 the foundation stone
of the new hall was laid. The architect was J. G. Ferguson and
the builders Colhoun Bros., Derry. The building was opened at
a cost of £20,000 in 1890. In 1908, on Easter Sunday, the
hall was burned down and the interior was entirely destroyed.
Reconstruction of the building was completed by 1912 to the design
of M.A. Robinson.
The Guildhall occupies an island site and the plan of the present
structure is much similar to that destroyed in the fire. The clock
tower and entrance remain, and the walls remain. It is the fenestration
that is mostly changed, with the addition of bay windows and some
battlemented parapets. The facade to Shipquay Place is most elaborate
and one suspects that Ferguson's design was more successful if
only for its simpler treatment. The building is a curious neo-Gothic
mixture with Tudor overtones and the round-headed openings on
the tower only help to confuse the design. Rhythm is not an attribute
of the design elements except in isolated parts. The building
is constructed of rock-faced snecked rubble built sandstone and
red sandstone trimmings or dressings.
Several architects were asked to submit designs for consideration:
E.E. Pinkerton, P H Elliot, A. McElwee and M.A. Robinson, all
of Derry.
The tower is finished with a copper-covered conical roof on top
of which is a fine weather vane.
Internally, there is a fine hall with decorated timber roof. The
stained glass is good, and was designed and executed by Campbell
Bros., with the exception of the coronation window by Meyer. The
large window in the assembly hall illustrates many aspects of
the city's history. The organ in the assembly hall was designed
by Sir Walter Parrott. The Guildhall also contains the council
chamber, laid out in the fashion of that of the City of London.
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1899: Architect: Daniel Conroy.
This factory, erected for Messrs. Bayer and Company, is a fine
piece of industrial architecture. It is four storeys high with
a continuous glazed dormer window going the length of the building,
interrupted only by the squat little clock tower. It is not a
large building. The fenestration on the main elevation is grouped
in five pairs horizontally each window finished with a segmental
head, and is carried round each gable though the rhythm is varied
and in the spandrels of the gables are pairs of semi-circular
windows. The structure is built of rock-faced sandstone, with
dressed sandstone trimmings, which sets it apart from the other
factories in the town.
[The Factory is currently derelict and at risk].
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