Londonderry City Antiquities

EDITED EXTRACTS FROM THE TOPOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF IRELAND, 1837

IN addition to the ecclesiastical buildings was also a Franciscan mendicant friary of unknown foundation, with a churchyard containing about three acres, the site of which is now occupied by Abbey Street and others, and of which the foundations were discovered a few years ago by some workmen, but no vestiges of any of these buildings are now remaining.

The only religious house preserved on the erection of the new city was the church of St Augustine, which was repaired and used prior to the erection of the present cathedral, after which it was known as "the little church;" its site is now occupied by the Bishop's garden.

A small square tower was built by O'Doherty for O'Donnell in the 15th or 16th century.

Near the Roman Catholic chapel, outside the walls, are St Columba's wells, originally three in number and called by separate names, but of which one is dried up; but the water, though considered in remote parts of the island a specific for diseases of the eye, is here held in little repute.

In the centre of St Columba's Lane, adjacent to the wells, is St Columba's Stone, on each side of which are two oval hollows artificially formed, concerning which various legends are related; the water deposited by rain in these hollows is believed to possess a miraculous power in curing various diseases.

The shutting of the gates by the Apprentice Boys on December 7th, 1688, and the opening of them on August 12th following, have been annually commemorated, but the ceremony has been somewhat modified since 1832, in which year an Act was passed declaring such commemorations illegal; and have led to the establishment of three distinct clubs of Apprentice Boys, under different denominations.

George Farquhar, the dramatic poet, was born here in 1677; and the Rev William Hamilton, DD, author of "Letters concerning the North Coast of Antrim," and other productions of natural history, who was assassinated at the house of Dr Waller, at Sharon [Glebe], on March 2nd, 1797, was also a native of this place.