Marks of Time
Historic Buildings as  illustrations of the past.
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hyberno romanesque

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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