Famous Derry statue of former Foyle pupil makes the move to new school building

A famous Derry statue has found a new home.

The statue of Sir John Lawrence, a former pupil of Foyle & Londonderry College, has stood at the entrance to the school’s Springtown Road building for around 50 years.

However, the statue was taken down last year and has now been be re-erected at the school’s new base at Limavady Road.

The moves marks the latest chapter in the statue’s varied history.

It was first erected in Lahore in Pakistan in the late 1880s in honour of Lawrence who served as Viceroy of India from 1864 to 1869.

However, the statue was taken down during the violence of the 1940s which led to the creation of Pakistan.

It lay on a scrapheap until the 1960s when a former pupil of Foyle & Londonderry College, now known as Foyle College, heard about the plight of the statue which had suffered significant damage in the intervening years.

The Foyle Old Boys Association decided that Lawrence should come back to his former school, where he had been a pupil for four years, and so they launched a campaign to bring him home.

The P & O Shipping Co. volunteered to bring the statue back from Karachi to London.

Once in London, the statue’s missing right hand and sword were replaced.

It was then transported to Derry by train and ferry.

After its journey across the world, the statue was erected at the Lawrence Hill campus of the local school in the 1960s.

However, that was not the ends of its travel, as the school moved to a new base at Springtown Road at the end of the 1960s.

It has remained there for the last 50 years but is now on the moved again.

The statue has now been erected at a prominent location at Foyle College’s new multi-million campus in the Waterside.