This large house stands on an elevated site overlooking the River Foyle. It is part of the historic core of the Ulster University’s Derry Campus. The house was built in the mid 1840s by David Watt and was first called Richmond. He was the owner of the Watts Distillery along with his brother Samuel, who lived at Foyle Hill above the Letterkenny Road. David Watt died in Richmond on the 22nd April 1876 and was buried in the graveyard of St. Columb’s Cathedral. The house was sold to a ship owners Bartholomew McCorkell, whose father William had built up the fleet of William McCorkell and Company founded in 1798.
Bartholomew McCorkell kept the name of Richmond but changed the plain house into what it is today by adding to it and redesigning it inside. After his death in 1887, Richmond passed to one of his daughters, Fannie Evelyn. She had been born in 1851 and had married Robert Corscadden from Boomhall. She died in 1922 and Richmond was passed to her nephew Lt Col Hugh Collum. On his death in 1929, Richmond was sold to Sir Basil McFarland who renamed it Aberfoyle.
During the Second World War the Aberfoyle was requisitioned by the Admiralty and leased to the US Navy. Thus Aberfoyle House was for the duration of the war part of the US Navy’s HQ for their naval operating base on the Foyle. The house was sold by Sir John McFarland to Bobbie Bell in 1986 who in turn sold it to the Derry City Council in 1987.
