Foyle College launches 400th anniversary book

TO commemorate 400 years of ‘top class’ education in Londonderry, Foyle College will launch an anniversary book ‘A View the Foyle Commanding’ on Friday of next week.

The book is intended as a portrait of Foyle College and its antecedent schools and, fittingly, the launch will take place in the School of Music and Performing Arts at the University of Ulster on Lawrence Hill, the very building the school occupied for almost 150 years between 1814 and 1967.

The original Free School was founded in 1617 by Mathias Springham, Master of The Merchant Taylors Company, within the city walls, which were still under construction at that time. The Free School was built in the area between St Augustine’s Church and the present day Apprentice Boys’ Memorial Hall.

Later renamed the Diocesan School, it stood on this site from 1617 until it moved to Lawrence Hill and was renamed Foyle College in 1814. It will be the first time the complete history of the school has been recorded and includes a detailed record of the several girls’ schools founded after 1860 culminating in amalgamations into a single establishment, Londonderry High School in 1923. This school in turn amalgamated with Foyle in 1976 to become Foyle & Londonderry College, the first coeducational grammar school in the city.

The book has been almost three years in production and has been guided through all the stages by Sean McMahon, editor, William Lynn, project manager, and Robert Montgomery, school archivist. A committee of former pupils and staff undertook to write various sections, while the narrative history for Foyle and the girls’ schools was written by Sean and Robert drawing upon the school’s extensive archive by W S Ferguson, Alan Roberts and Mable Colhoun were drawn upon as well as lived experiences and reminiscences, contributed by former pupils and accounts of the careers of many of its famous alumni.

Illustrated with pictures the 200-page hardback book is published by Third Millenium Information Ltd, London, and will retail at £40. They are available from Friday at the school’s office on Duncreggan Road, with copies available at just £35 at the the book launch.

NB: Former pupils planning to attend the book launch must inform the Principal’s Secretary at Duncreggan by Tuesday, March 5. Telephone 028 7126 8875 or email [email protected]

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