placenamesClogh
An Chloch
Usually written Clough locally, the Antrim settlement has a documented history of manorial administration, livestock fairs and several religious communities.
The name
These Irish name elements are associated with this record in the Logainm glossary.
An element’s translation is a clue, rather than a complete explanation of the name. Its form and meaning depend on local history and the full Irish name.
Recorded forms
- An Chloch · Irish · main form · validated name
- Clogh · English · main form
Place & story
The courthouse and livestock fairs
Samuel Lewis’s 1837 account describes Clogh as the head of the manor of Old Stone. Its courthouse had a courtroom, jury room and two lower rooms for debtors subject to decrees of the manor court. The village then comprised twenty houses, but its fairs drew trade from farther afield. Alongside cattle, Lewis records ponies brought from the Scottish Highlands. The small crossroads settlement therefore had administrative and commercial roles extending beyond its immediate population. [2]
A castle above the village
Lewis also describes the ruined castle on a high rock overlooking Clogh. In his time, the strongest surviving element was part of a gateway; he noted a well, a dividing ditch and building foundations. He records a local tradition associating the castle first with the MacQuillans and then with the MacDonnells. This is Oldstone Castle in Antrim, a different site from the better-known motte-and-bailey castle at Clough in County Down. [2]
The old churchyard and its successor
Clough Cemetery preserves the ruins of a church dating from the early seventeenth century on an older religious site. Mid and East Antrim Borough Council records that worship continued there until 1842, when St James’s Church of Ireland was built in the village. The cemetery remained in use. An extension completed in 2025 added burial space and improved the approach, continuing a long history of local burial around the earlier church. [3]
The Presbyterian congregation west of the village
About a mile west of Clough, the Presbyterian meeting house belongs to a congregation with seventeenth-century roots. Harry Hume’s historical study traces a petition for a minister in 1656 and the later division when Andrew Rowan conformed to the established church. Peter Orr ministered to the remaining Presbyterians from 1673. The account also records a fire that destroyed congregational registers predating 1865, an important limit on what survives of the community’s earlier documentary history. [4]
Geographic information
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Clogh. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Clogh or Clough, Antrim: A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, 1837 · Samuel Lewis, reproduced by Library Ireland
- Historic Clough Cemetery upgrade and extension complete, 20 June 2025 · Mid and East Antrim Borough Council
- A Church at Clough, published online 5 October 2013 · Harry Hume, Glens of Antrim Historical Society
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2021-05-26. How this page was prepared.