The Guildhall is the house where the elected members of Derry City and Strabane District Council meet. It is a Grade A listed building.
The current building was preceded by an earlier town hall called the Market House which was built in the 17th century and destroyed in the Siege of Derry in 1689. The current building, which was designed by John Guy Ferguson and financed by The Honourable The Irish Society, was completed in 1890. The design for the clock tower was modelled on the Elizabeth Tower in London.
After a disastrous fire in 1908, in which only the tower and rear block survived, and more funding from The Honourable The Irish Society, the Guildhall was rebuilt to the design of Mathew Alexander Robinson in 1912. The current organ, which was designed by Sir Walter Parratt and has 3,132 pipes, was installed in 1914.
During The Troubles, the Guildhall was the focus of multiple terror attacks. The building was badly damaged by two bombs in 1972, but was restored at a cost of £1.7 million and reopened in 1977. On 23 September 1980 the Field Day Theatre Company presented its first production, the premiere of Brian Friel's Translations, in the Guildhall.
The guildhall, which had been the meeting place of the county borough of Londonderry for much of the 20th century, continued to be the local seat of government after the formation of Londonderry City Council in 1972; the council was renamed Derry City Council in 1984.
References:Saint-Georges de Boscherville Abbey is a former Benedictine abbey. It was founded in about 1113 by Guillaume de Tancarville on the site of an earlier establishment of secular canons and settled by monks from the Abbey of Saint-Evroul. The abbey church made of Caumont stone was erected from 1113 to 1140. The Norman builders aimed to have very well-lit naves and they did this by means of tall, large windows, initially made possible by a wooden ceiling, which prevented uplift, although this was replaced by a Gothic vault in the 13th century. The chapter room was built after the abbey church and dates from the last quarter of the 12th century.
The arrival of the Maurist monks in 1659, after the disasters of the Wars of Religion, helped to get the abbey back on a firmer spiritual, architectural and economic footing. They erected a large monastic building one wing of which fitted tightly around the chapter house (which was otherwise left as it was).