St Columb's Hall bought with £3.75m of lottery funding

One of Londonderry's most historic and culturally significant buildings is to be "sustainably redeveloped" after it was bought with almost £4m of National Lottery funding.

St Columb's Hall, a Grade A listed building, opened its doors in 1888 but its condition has gradually declined over recent years and in 2020 it stopped hosting events.

It has now been purchased by the St Columb's Hall Trust after it was awarded £3.75m from The National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Anne-Marie Gallagher from the trust said it had been "a long road" to bring the hall back into community ownership, and plans for its redevelopment would honour the legacy of the 138-year-old hall.

"St Columb's Hall is the embodiment of the spirit of our city," she told BBC News NI.

"It embodies the ambition we have, the creativity and a rich heritage – we want to keep building on that."

Known to many as "the people's hall", construction began in 1886 and was funded in the main by donations from local people.

It quickly came to be one of the most important venues in the city, attracting performers including Roy Orbison, Ruby Murray and Val Doonican, as well as local stars such as Josef Locke.

Conservation architect Karl Pedersen said the grand old building was "robust and adaptable", but needed a "little bit of reordering".

"It has responded to so many different generations," he said.

"If you are an Undertone fan you will have seen The Undertones here, if you are a Phil Coulter fan you will have seen Phil Coulter here.

"You have got the Féis, the cinema. It is a vast building, over its four levels," he said.

It is where Emmeline Pankhurst, who campaigned for women's right to vote, made a keynote speech in 1910, while in 1924 Eamon de Valera – who would later become Irish president and Taoiseach (prime minister) - rallied supporters in St Columb's for the cause of Irish independence.

More recently, hit Channel 4 TV series Derry Girls filmed some of the show's most famous scenes from Season 3 at St Columb's Hall.

Around two-thirds of the building is currently unusable due to its decline.

Under the trust's redevelopment plans, the building will be fully restored and made accessible to the public in its entirety, with work set to begin in the spring of 2027.

That will include repair and modernisation work, while a new roof-top terrace and new ground floor space including an exhibition area will also be created at the venue.

A meeting space to host debates, and a creative entrepreneurial space are also planned for the redeveloped hall.

"It is an incredible heritage building that lives long in people's memories and is now being sustainably redeveloped so that new generations and new audiences can freely access it, enjoy it and appreciate its legacy in the city," Stella Byrne from the National Lottery Heritage Fund said.

The purchase of St Columb's Hall is the latest in a number of projects aimed at breathing new life into Derry's built heritage.

Last week, plans were submitted for the former Austins department store that, if approved, will see it transformed into a new cultural and community hub.

In August, it was announced the Inner City Trust had, with more than £1.4m in funding from the Department for Communities, purchased the former Danske Bank building in the city.