Magee University College, Northland Road, Derry

Magee University College, Northland Road, Derry

Magee University College is a detached, symmetrical two-storey sandstone Gothic Revival building constructed between 1856 and 1865. It was designed by Edward P. Gribbon, a Dublin-based architect and quantity surveyor, with the execution of the plans overseen by Gordon Stewart (died 1860), Londonderry's County Surveyor. The building is named after its chief benefactor, Martha Maria Magee (c.1755–1846), whose bequest of £20,000 to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church made its construction possible. It stands as the first third-level education building in Londonderry and occupies a prominent elevated site to the northwest of the city, within the Magee Conservation Area, with views eastward over the River Foyle.

Historical Background

Martha Magee was born in Lurgan and married the Reverend William Magee of First Lurgan Presbyterian Church, who died in 1800. Following the deaths of her unmarried brothers she inherited a fortune of at least £75,000. When she died on 22nd June 1846 she left £20,000 expressly for the establishment of a college to educate Presbyterian ministers. The project had been in discussion for decades prior to her death, driven by the need to provide local education for Ulster's half-million or more Presbyterians, who had until then relied on Trinity College Dublin as the sole university in Ireland. Political obstacles — including Prime Minister Robert Peel's refusal to sanction a denominational college while his government was forming the non-sectarian Queen's Colleges — delayed progress into the 1850s. The other potential sites considered were Belfast, Armagh, and Coleraine; once the Assembly College on Botanic Avenue, Belfast, opened in 1853, Londonderry became the preferred location.

In 1854 the trustees of Magee's Will acquired three fields in the townland of Edenballymore from Samuel Gilliland, a local flour miller, grocer, and wine and spirit merchant. The design was selected through an architectural competition. The brief called for eight classrooms, eight professors' houses, a common hall and library capable of holding 500 people, a laboratory, and a museum room. Gribbon's Gothic Revival design was chosen, though he was later relieved of his role following a dispute with the trustees, and Stewart took over the execution. The builder contracted was Matthew McClelland, operating from premises on the Strand Road.

The foundation stone was laid on 18th August 1856. Although the Irish Builder reported the building was approaching completion in December 1859, the college did not open to students until 1865. By 1861 over £8,500 had been spent on construction. The building was primarily constructed of Scottish Giffnock Sandstone, with locally-quarried Derry Schist used as a secondary material. The grounds in front of the college were laid out to designs by Daniel Ferguson, a Scottish horticulturalist and former curator of Belfast's Botanic Gardens (1836–64), who died before the college opened.

Magee College was officially inaugurated on 10th October 1865 with an initial roll of 26 students. In its first decade it struggled to attract students — only eight were enrolled in 1874 — partly due to its failure to secure a formal university affiliation. In 1879 it became one of the constituent colleges of the Royal University of Ireland, which increased enrolment. Women students were admitted from 1883. The professors' houses originally planned alongside the college were erected in the 1880s and 1890s. The college roof was damaged by severe storms in the winter of 1894–95 and subsequently repaired.

In 1905 a two-storey L-shaped rear extension was added to the north-west side of the building, designed by Matthew Alexander Robinson (1872–1929). In 1907 a benefactor named Basil McCrea left his entire estate to the college, enabling the appointment of new staff and the construction of an additional professor's house at the corner of Northland Road and Rock Road, built in 1911.

Magee's connection with the Royal University of Ireland ended in 1909 when the college was excluded from the Irish university system on denominational grounds. It then affiliated with Trinity College Dublin, remaining so until 1953. During the Second World War, the college was requisitioned by the Royal Navy. Recently uncovered plans revealed that Allied forces established a secret underground bunker — known as Base One Europe — beneath what is now the car park and lawns of the college, used to co-ordinate over a million Allied troops during the Battle of the Atlantic. At the war's end, the Nazi submarine fleet officially surrendered at Lisahally, outside Londonderry. Talbot House, another building used for wartime purposes and described as the headquarters of the first United States base of its kind in European waters, was later demolished in 1988. The underground bunker was filled with concrete and has only recently been investigated using archaeological techniques. During the war, classes were held at the Model School on Northland Road and in some of the professors' houses.

From 1953, under the Magee University College Londonderry Act, the college received government funding and separated into two institutions: Magee Theological College and the secular Magee University College. In the 1960s there were hopes that Magee would become Northern Ireland's second university, but the Lockwood Report of 1964 recommended that the new university be built at Coleraine and that Magee be closed. Public outcry led to Magee being incorporated into the New University of Ulster established in 1968. In 1984 that university was merged with the Ulster Polytechnic at Jordanstown, the Arts College in Belfast, and Magee College to form the University of Ulster. In 1988 two modern red-brick teaching blocks were erected to the southeast of the original building. A two-storey extension was added to the rear of the Gothic building in 1989, a modern library was built to the south of the campus in 1990, and the interior was refurbished in 1991. The building was listed Grade A in 1976. The Magee Conservation Area was designated in 2006, with the original college building as its centrepiece.

Exterior

The building is rectangular on plan, facing east, with a three-storey central entrance tower and advanced gabled pavilions at either end. The roof is pitched natural slate with terracotta ridge tiles and lead valleys, set behind a crenellated parapet wall. Several ashlar sandstone chimney stacks rise to the ridge, fitted with decorative clay pots interspersed with copper lanterns. Cast-iron rainwater goods are supported on iron drive-through brackets to the rear elevation; cast-iron hoppers and downpipes break through the parapet wall.

The walling is coursed smooth ashlar sandstone with fine lime pointing, a projecting plinth course, and a continuous string course between floors. The original slender 2/2 timber sash windows without horns are set behind stone tracery: Tudor-arched at first-floor level with a continuous hood moulding, and square-headed at ground-floor level, all with flush splayed sills. Both ground- and first-floor stone tracery comprises paired trefoil openings to the lower portion that extend and split into four equally spaced smaller trefoils above.

The symmetrical front (east) elevation is dominated by a central square-plan three-storey entrance tower, flanked by three equally spaced bays topped by castellation featuring quatrefoil motifs above each window, with an advanced gabled projection containing a two-storey angled bay at each end. The tower has a steeply pitched pie-ended natural slate roof with octagonal crocketed pinnacles rising from the four corners, corbelled out below the parapet. At the centre of each elevation a further octagonal pinnacle rises above the parapet with poppy-head finials. To the southeast corner of the tower is a clasping octagonal three-stage turret with trefoil blind panels to each face at each level; it rises above the parapet as a series of crocketed pinnacles terminating in a tapered spire with a metal finial. To the northeast corner is a stepped buttress. At the upper levels of the tower there is a two-sided angled oriel window, with windows matching those of the ground-floor front elevation, surmounted by crocketed finials and drop finials to the base. The Tudor-arched door opening has a hood moulding and painted diagonally-sheeted double-leaf doors, opening onto a sandstone-paved platform with seven steps down to the tarmacadam front driveway. A pair of squat octagonal sandstone pillars supports shield-bearing lion statues at the foot of the steps.

The north side elevation of the entrance tower has large four-light stone tracery windows with slender 2/2 timber sash windows and hood mouldings at ground and first floor, and a pair of Tudor-arched window openings with hood mouldings at the upper level. The gabled end pavilions also have steeply pitched pie-ended natural slate roofs set behind raised gables at the outer corners, with octagonal crocketed finials corbelled out below the parapet and a central pinnacle rising above the gable apex. The south pavilion has stepped angle buttresses and a two-sided angled bay window with paired 2/2 timber sash windows set behind stone tracery detailed as described above, with a carved stone oculus centred above the bay containing a quatrefoil blind opening. The north gabled pavilion mirrors the south pavilion, with stepped diagonal buttresses, a pair of diminutive tracery windows at ground-floor level, and a two-sided angled oriel window at the upper level with a corbelled base.

The south side elevation comprises an advanced gabled projection with five-light window openings at each level: pointed-arched at first-floor level with interlacing stone tracery and a continuous hood moulding, and square-headed at ground-floor level with stone tracery and fixed lights behind with slim horizontal glazing bars. To the gable is an oculus with geometric tracery. The recessed part of the elevation has stepped buttresses and diminutive windows, along with a Tudor-arched door opening fitted with a replacement steel-clad door and hood moulding with square label stops.

The rear (west) elevation has three gabled projections and is abutted by a flat-roofed wing connected to a two-storey flat-roofed 1960s block and a further single-storey flat-roofed extension to the southwest. The rear walling is rough-cast rendered with an ashlar sandstone plinth course and flush ashlar sandstone quoins; windows are detailed as per the front elevation with flush sandstone surrounds. The south gable has four-light square-headed perpendicular stone tracery windows, that at first-floor level rising in the centre. The north gable is abutted by a two-storey rendered block with a hipped slate roof, projecting cornice moulding, ruled-and-lined rendered walling, square-headed window openings with 2/2 timber sash windows, and bottom-hung overlights. This is the two-storey hipped-roof extension added in 1905 to designs by Matthew Alexander Robinson.

The north side elevation has a central advanced gable flanked by stepped buttresses, with square-headed window openings at ground and first floor with lugged architraves, and a pointed-arched window centred below the apex. The advanced gable has timber-framed French doors with four blank panels above to the left, and cruciform stone mullions with a corresponding fixed light above a two-pane sliding sash to the right. To the left and right of this gable are single fixed lights above a horizontal stone transom, with a two-pane sliding sash below. At first-floor level there are two pairs of 1/1 sliding sashes with a central stone mullion.

Interior

Despite some loss of historic fabric, the most elaborately decorated room — the Great Hall — survives. A stained glass window dedicated to Thomas Witherow, made by Ward and Partners, survives in the room above the entrance.

Setting and Boundary Features

The building stands on extensive university campus grounds to the west of Northland Road and to the south of Rock Road, on an elevated site with views over the River Foyle to the east. At the Rock Road entrance is a pair of decorative wrought-iron gates and matching pedestrian gates supported on square iron pillars with swan-neck screen plinth walls supporting iron railings, terminated by a pair of Gothic-styled octagonal sandstone pillars with trefoil panels. A pair of squat octagonal sandstone pillars supporting shield-bearing lion statues flanks the main entrance driveway. The western boundary along Northland Road is defined by rubblestone walling in Derry schist, which further augments the character of the setting within the Magee Conservation Area. The building forms the centrepiece of a wider group of impressive 19th-century buildings forming the Magee Campus.