hyberno romanesque
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By the eleventh century, the influence of Roman architecture had filtered into the island and the Romanesque Style, which displaced openings with flat heads in favour of ones with arched heads, started to be adopted. One of the best examples of this change can be found near to the city at Banagher, where the inside of a traditional entrance door with flat head and angled jambs is a perfect arch.
Over the next 100 years the style became more decorative with doors becoming flanked by columns and receding towards the entrance with decorative arches above. In some buildings ‘blind arcading’-the use of arches as a decorative form on walls -was also adopted. Fragments of this can be seen near the city at Banagher and Dungiven Priory. This door in the Long Tower Church is a reproduction of the style dating from 1912. Another iconic feature associated with Irish Monasteries was the round tower. There is clear historical evidence for this on the first map of the city drawn in 1600. Located near today’s Long Tower church it is typical of the type with four stages indicated by slit windows and more windows under a stone cap. This example, in the City Cemetery, dates from the late Nineteenth Century when, like high crosses, they became popular as a distinctively Irish feature. |
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