Qualla: Clones, County Monaghan

Clones, County Monaghan: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andreas F. Borchert, CC BY-SA 4.0. When the boxer Barry McGuigan was at his peak in the mid 1980s, fighting his way to the world featherweight title, the cameras kept finding him back in Clones, the small County Monaghan town where he had grown up. He came in to defend his title in 1985 wearing his blue Republic of Ireland trunks with the United Nations dove of peace on them, an Irishman from a town six miles from a border that had cut his life in two. The nickname stuck: the Clones Cyclone. Clones is a town that wears its history without much fuss. A sixth-century saint, a ninth-century round tower, a tenth-century high cross in the market square, a sixteenth-century lace tradition, a railway that vanished overnight, a writer whose novel got Neil Jordan to film here. Population in 2022: 1,885. It is a town the Partition of Ireland nearly broke, that survived anyway.

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Image: Andreas F. Borchert | CC BY-SA 4.0

Clones, County Monaghan: St Tighernach's Hill

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mrgoggins90, CC BY-SA 4.0. Clones, in Irish Cluain Eois, means roughly 'the meadow of Eois.' Local etymology has been debated for a century: Seosamh O Dufaigh argued the word was a cognate of the Welsh awch, meaning a point or a tip; Bearnard O'Dubhthaigh disputed the derivation. Folklore prefers an older ...

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Image: Mrgoggins90 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Clones, County Monaghan: Castle, Cathedral, Cross

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stefan2901 Stefan Schäfer, Lich, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Plantation Castle on the higher ground of the town was built before 1640 by the Simpson family, three stories of stone with a kitchen, brew house, stable, and bawn. In 1641, two hundred Jacobites assembled in the town and the local Protestant inhabitants barricaded themselves...

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Image: Stefan2901 Stefan Schäfer, Lich | CC BY-SA 3.0

Clones, County Monaghan: What Partition Took Away

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Deadstar (talk · contribs), CC BY-SA 3.0. The Partition of Ireland in 1921 cut Clones off from most of its economic hinterland. The town sits in County Monaghan, in the Republic, with County Fermanagh in Northern Ireland surrounding it on three sides. Before partition, the town had been a railway junction of unusual impo...

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Image: Deadstar (talk · contribs) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Clones, County Monaghan: Lace, Film, and the Cyclone

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mrgoggins90, CC BY-SA 4.0. Clones lace, an Irish crochet adaptation of Venetian needlepoint, became a major cottage industry in the famine years of the 1840s under the encouragement of Cassandra Hand, the wife of the local Anglican rector. Examples from the early twentieth century are now displayed in the ...

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Image: Mrgoggins90 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Clones, County Monaghan: Other Sons of the Town

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andreas F. Borchert, CC BY-SA 4.0. Beyond McCabe and McGuigan, Clones has produced an oddly international roster. John George Bowes was Mayor of Toronto from 1851 to 1853. John Joseph Lynch, born in Clones in 1816, became the first Archbishop of Toronto in 1860 and served until his death in 1888. Thomas Bracken, w...

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Image: Andreas F. Borchert | CC BY-SA 4.0