VIDEO: Inside one of Ireland's most beautiful churches St Columba's Long Tower, Derry

The current church in the Bogside / Long Tower area close to the city centre sits in the same area where the massive Temple Mor cathedral stood during the Middle Ages in the ancient city of Derry in north west Ireland.

The Catholic church, distinctive and ornate inside and out, was originally built to a much smaller scale.

The Long Tower St Columba’s Church was largely the vision of Dungiven priest Father John Lynch, who in 1783 began raising funds for it just months after the penal laws were repealed.

Construction began the following year, and after the death of Father Lynch, his successor Rev Charles O’Donnell, set about increasing its footprint in the early 19th Century.

Protestant clergy in the city were among the benefactors in an early example of cross-community co-operation between the different denominations, a tradition which has been revived in the modern era and continues on today.

At the time construction began, the Derry Journal newspaper, or as it was then called, the London-Derry Journal and General Advertiser, was then nine years old and over the next two and half centuries the newspaper would become an important chronicler of the church and the successive generations of parishioners.

For a much more detailed history of this, one of the beautiful churches in Ireland, see the parish website: longtowerchurch.org/our-parish/#!/history