Foyle College and Londonderry High School have been providing education for young people in the Derry area and further afield for more than 400 years. In October 2007, the school celebrated its 390th anniversary with a plaque commemorating headmasters of the school since 1617. The school then celebrated their 400th anniversary, in 2017, with a service in
St Columb's Cathedral on the official anniversary date of 3 March. a commemorative concert in
Derry's Guildhall was held, a special dinner also took place. A proposed plaque is to be unveiled and many artifacts from Foyle College's past were exhibited in the Siege Museum, on Society Street, from April 2017 to October 2017. Many more commemorative events also took place throughout the course of 2017.
Foyle College Foyle College traces its origins to 1617 and the establishment of the Free Grammar School at Society Street within the
city walls of
Derry by Mathias Springham of the
Merchant Taylors' Company of
London. The original building had the following Latin inscription over the main doorway: 'Mathias Springham, A.R. ad honorem dei et bonarum, literarum propogationem, hanc scholam fundavit anno salutis, M.D.C.XVII'. The Free School was built to "the honour of God and the spreading of good literature". The school received no endowment from that company or from
The Honourable The Irish Society (the body charged with the plantation of the
County of Londonderry in the 17th century). There followed an ongoing dispute between the Irish Society and the
Church of Ireland Bishop of Derry as to who had the authority to appoint the headmaster. The former because one of its representatives had founded the school and the latter because it held the school to be one of the diocesan grammar schools provided for by statute (the
Free Schools Act 1570 (12 Eliz. 1. c. 1 (I)). This was only resolved in the early 19th century by an
act of Parliament, the '''''' (
48 Geo. 3. c. 77). The old school within the city walls eventually outlived its usefulness, and in 1814 came the move to the newly erected and well-proportioned
Georgian building set on a height above the Strand outside the city walls, designed by the architect,
John Bowden (who had also designed the Courthouse in Derry,
St George's Church, High Street, Belfast, and
St Stephen's Church ['the Pepper Canister Church'] on Mount Street on
Dublin's
Southside). The school took the name 'Foyle College' in 1814. The story goes that one of the boarders,
George Fletcher Moore, proposed to the other pupils "to christen the new school, Foyle College" which was seconded and carried with repeated "acclamations". For 30 years, from 1868, Foyle College had to compete with a vigorous rival in the
Londonderry Academical Institution. This school, established by a body of influential local merchants, moved in 1871 from East Wall to a new site in Academy Road.
The Honourable The Irish Society, which contributed to the funds of both schools, proposed a scheme of amalgamation, and negotiations finally resulted in the passing of the '''''' (
59 & 60 Vict. c. cxxxi), the united school retaining the name and with it claiming the traditions of the older school. Foyle then had the use of the buildings at Lawrence Hill and Academy Road. Following the
Second World War, and as a consequence of the many changes brought about by the
Education Act (Northern Ireland) 1947, the governors acquired a site at Springtown on Northland Road, overlooking the school playing‑fields, to build a new school. This was opened on 2 May 1968 by
The Duke of Kent.
Londonderry High School Like Foyle College, Londonderry High School owed its existence to the merging of two independent institutions. The first of these, the Ladies' Collegiate School, was set up in 1877 by the Misses McKillip - pioneers in the movement for higher education for women in Ireland. Their vision and drive resulted in the starting of a school at 11 Queen Street. Two further moves saw the renamed Victoria High School located in Crawford Square, where boarding and day pupils were accommodated. The nearby Northlands School of Housewifery (1908) was associated with Victoria High School. At the top of Lawrence Hill, Miss J. Kerr had opened St. Lurach's College circa 1900 - this school also took boarders. Strand House School (1860) closed during the
First World War and the girls mostly went to Victoria or St. Lurach's. In 1922 Victoria High School and St. Lurach's amalgamated to form Londonderry High School. By 1928 Duncreggan, formerly the home of the late William Tillie, Lord Lieutenant of the City of Londonderry, had been purchased and the boarders were transferred there from St. Lurach's. In the immediate post-war period there was an ever-growing need for increased educational facilities. The high point of an ambitious and forward-looking programme was undoubtedly the opening of the new £150,000 building extensions between Duncreggan House and Dunseverick. The new buildings were opened by
Her Grace The Duchess of Abercorn in May 1962, and on the same day the then Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Education announced that a new block would be erected to house the Preparatory Department, and this followed in 1964. In 1974 the girls joined the boys of Foyle College Preparatory Department which moved into these premises in 1974, and so anticipated the later amalgamation under the Foyle and Londonderry College Act 1976 (c. xviii), resulting in the first co-educational grammar school in Derry. The Preparatory Department closed in 2003. ==Present==