Qualla: St Columba's Church, Long Tower

St Columba's Church, Long Tower: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Liam Hughes from Milwaukee, WI, USA, CC BY 2.0. Father John Lynch needed money to build a Catholic church in Derry. It was the 1780s, the Penal Laws restricting Catholic worship were finally being eased, and the city had not had a serious Catholic place of worship since the Reformation more than two centuries earlier. So Lynch went door to door. The interesting part is who answered. He raised the funds for the Long Tower Church partly from Derry's Catholics, but also - in significant amounts - from the city's Protestants. The church opened in 1788, an unusually ecumenical birth for a building that would later host the funeral of one of Ireland's most controversial republican leaders.

Image: Liam Hughes from Milwaukee, WI, USA | CC BY 2.0

St Columba's Church, Long Tower: On Older Ground

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit OpenStreetMap contributors, CC BY 3.0. The site itself is older than the modern church. Catholic worship is recorded here as far back as the twelfth century, on land associated with St Columba - the sixth-century Irish saint who founded the monastery from which Derry takes its name. The 1788 building was much smaller ...

Image: OpenStreetMap contributors | CC BY 3.0

St Columba's Church, Long Tower: The Cemetery on the Slope

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ardfern, CC BY-SA 3.0. On the morning of 8 January 1934 the perimeter wall of the Long Tower cemetery, the one facing Lecky Road, gave way. A section of the graveyard slid down the hill. No passers-by were hurt - and the timing, in a busy commercial street, was extraordinarily lucky - but graves were d...

Image: Ardfern | CC BY-SA 3.0

St Columba's Church, Long Tower: Opus Sectile

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dieglop, CC BY-SA 4.0. Behind the High Altar are three grand panels installed in 1909 - the Ascension of Christ flanked by St Peter and St Paul. They are made of opus sectile, a technique with a Latin name dating to ancient Rome: opalescent painted glass tiles, originally used on luxury floors. Most op...

Image: Dieglop | CC BY-SA 4.0

St Columba's Church, Long Tower: The Funeral of Martin McGuinness

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kenneth Allen, CC BY-SA 2.0. On 23 March 2017, the Long Tower hosted the Requiem Mass for Martin McGuinness. He had died two days earlier, aged 66, of a rare heart condition. He had been Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland for ten years - the Provisional IRA commander turned Sinn Fein deputy leader who...

Image: Kenneth Allen | CC BY-SA 2.0