In her seventh Cathedral Tales, St Columb's Cathedral guide, Ian Bartlett tells Sentinel reporter Olga Bradshaw about how part of the City's historic gates were made into a table, while a chair was fashioned from a bridge a famous Bishop helped to finance...
IN a quiet corner of St Columb's Cathedral is the William Alexander Chapel, which is dedicated to the memory of the Rt Rev Wm Alexander, who was Bishop of Derry and Raphoe between 1867 and 1896.
He later went on to become Archbishop of Armagh.
If y
ou have time nip in and have a nosy, the windows are exquisite. The colourful yet serene window at the very back on the East Wall is in his memory, and in the chapel there is a credence table. A table of this type if used to hold the bread and the wine prior to a Communion Service.
According to my guide, Ian Bartlett, this table was made from the wood of the City Gates, and by all accounts, we are talking about the original City Gates which the Apprentice Boys closed in the face of the approaching Jacobite Army.
Ian is not able to tell me which one, but it's incredible to think that far from being lost for all time, that the City Gates actually went on to have a new life after protecting the inhabitants of the Walled City during the Siege of Derry.
It makes me wonder what other furniture might be scattered throughout the City and beyond that folk pay scant regard to that could, in fact, be of huge historical importance, but their owners have no clue as to its true origins.
Sitting beside the Credence Table is another amazing piece of furniture - a chair crafted from the City's very first bridge.
"This is a chair made from the timbers of the old wooden bridge, which was erected across the Foyle River in 1790 and remained there until about 1863.
"This is the bridge that Bishop Hervey contributed £1,000 to the building work. He was instrumental in getting the bridge built, although the eventual final bill for it was £16,000. The rest of the money for the bridge came from the then Corporation and the Honourable the Irish Society," says Ian.
The bridge was started in 1790 and originally was a footbridge for pedestrians, but by 1791 it was able to take horse-drawn coaches. It began at the bottom of where the current Bridge Street is now, which is transected by Foyleside Roundabout, and would have crossed the River to what was Water Street, off Duke Street, roughly where the old railway station buildings now stand.
"This was the first bridge across the Foyle River and was completely made of wood by American engineers. This bridge dated from 1791 to 1863, at which time the Carlisle Bridge was built, and in turn Carlisle Bridge was replaced by Craigavon Bridge in 1933. This bridge was built right beside Carlisle Bridge and that meant there were three bridges across the Foyle, and then, of course, we have the Foyle Bridge, which was built in 1982 or thereabouts, and now we are about to have a pedestrian bridge built across the river as well," Ian muses.
In addition to the dedicated window on the East Wall, on the South Wall is a lovely series of scenes from the life of St Columba, after whom the church is named, again in the most exquisite colours.
"The windows show him departing Derry in 563AD to sail to Iona and depicts him coming back to the Convention at Drumceatt in Limavady, and the third also shows his death in Iona in 597AD.
"He was one of the great Irish Saints, probably second only to St Patrick, and he took the Gospels to the west coast of Scotland and his 'disciples' if you want to call them that, took the Gospels to the east coast of England and eventually to Europe."
I ask Ian's opinion about the stories that do the rounds about where the first church in the north west was set up by St Columba.
"My own personal opinion, and it is only an opinion, is that St Augustine's is on the site of his original monastry," he said.
The side chapel is the ideal place to view a series of delicate mosaic pictures which flank the altar in the Chancel and I ask Ian what they depict.
"They depict St Matthew, St Patrick, St Mark, St Luke, St Columba and St John. The original reredos, which is what we call this structure, comprised just of the centre portion, and after it was installed the 'wings' were added by a member of the McCorkell family in memory of one of the sisters, Mrs Fanny Corscadden, wife of Robert, added them in memory of her sister. Again, there is a beautiful window, erected in memory of Bishop Higgin who died in 1866, and depicting Christ with his Apostle and on top of that is the Ascension.
"When the sun streams through the East window and the South windows the effect of the light through these windows is beautiful."
Cannonballs and other arsenal in the Cathedral
As you enter the vestibule at St Columb's Cathedral one of the first things you see is a metal plinth with a cannonball on top.
The mortal shell is around 270lbs and is 16 inches in diameter, and was fired into the city during the 105-day Siege, landing in the church grounds on July 10, 1689. It contained the terms of surrender which were written on parchment and rolled up and placed inside a cylindrical hole in the mortar - which you can see.
The contents of the 'Terms of Surrender' as the parchment became known, are recorded in full in Ash's Journal., which are reproduced for visitors to read.
However, one of the more unusual cannonballs that the Cathedral has on display is one in the Chapter House.
As the 105-day Siege drew on, lead became a commodity in short supply, so to conserve the precious metal what the cannonball makers used to do was mould lead round stone.
The cannonball on show was dug up on the Lonemoor Road in the 1950s.
Interestingly other Siege artefacts on show in the Chapter House include oak from the Siege Guard House on Orchard Street, the Circumstansial Journal of the Siege of Londonderry, a piece of orange ribbon taken from Henry Baker's coffin which was, apparently, tied round the wrists of the shroud in which he was buried, which was in the North Aisle of the Cathedral in June 1689. Baker's coffin was opened in 1861 during the repair works that were being done in the Cathedral.
In the lower cabinet to the left is an array of Siege and other swords relating to the rich history of the City from the 17th and 18th Centuries, these include Col Adam Murray's swords - he was one of the heroes of the Apprentice Boys.
There is also a plethora of pellets which would have been fired from muskets. This lead shot was recovered from close to where the Boom was placed across the River Foyle preventing supplies and help from reaching the thousands of Williamites who sought refuge inside the City Walls during the Siege.
