POSTED FROM

CLONBULLOGUE

CO. OFFALY · IE

Clonbullogue
Cluain Bolg, Co. Offaly

The Ireland's Hidden Heartlands
STOP 07 / 07

Cluain Bolg · Co. Offaly

An island of green in the Bog of Allen where three counties meet, a parachute club drops out of the sky most weekends, and a Michael Collins spy is buried up the road.

Clonbullogue is a small village - around 400 people - on a low island of green pasture in the middle of the Bog of Allen, in the corner of Offaly that almost touches Laois and Kildare. The name in Irish, Cluain Bolg, is usually read as something like the bumpy meadow. That is honest: this is dry ground in the middle of wet ground, and the village grew on it because it was somewhere to stand.

It is not a postcard village and it does not pretend to be. The R401 and R442 cross at the centre, there is a church, a pub, a shop, a GAA pitch, and the bog in every direction beyond. In the 1950s Bord na Mona came and the population, which had collapsed after the Famine to under a hundred, grew again on turf work. The bog is the reason the village is here and the reason it nearly was not.

Two things lift it above the average bogland crossroads. One is in the sky - Clonbullogue Airfield, two kilometres west, is the headquarters of the Irish Parachute Club, and on a fine weekend the air above the bog is full of canopies. The other is in the ground at Coolygagen cemetery, where Eamon Broy is buried: the detective sergeant who copied Dublin Castle's secret files for Michael Collins, and who is about as close to a James Bond as a flat bog village in Offaly is ever going to produce.

Come for the quiet, the sky and the history, not for nightlife or scenery in the dramatic sense. This is the flat, black-soiled, big-skied middle of Ireland. If you like emptiness, you will like it here.

Population

401 (2022 census)

Founded

Granted to the Purefoy family by Charles II in 1679, when it was briefly called Purefoy's Place

Coords

53.2600° N, 7.0864° W

01 / 07

At a glance.

Three things every local will eventually mention. Read these and you've already understood more than most day-trippers do.

01 The setting

An island of pasture in the middle of the Bog of Allen.

Clonbullogue sits on raised dry ground surrounded by bog, where Offaly, Laois and Kildare almost touch. The Figile River runs through it. Edenderry is 11 km north. The R401 and R442 cross in the middle of the village and that crossroads is most of the village.

Walks & outings → 02 The sky

The Irish Parachute Club jumps here.

Two kilometres west, Clonbullogue Airfield is the home of the Irish Parachute Club - one grass runway, a handful of aircraft, and intense skydiving most weekends and bank holidays. If you see canopies over the bog, that is where they came from.

Stories & lore → 03 The spy

Eamon Broy, the man inside Dublin Castle, is buried up the road.

Ned Broy was born near here in 1887, fed G Division's files to Michael Collins, and later ran the Garda. His grave and monument are at Coolygagen cemetery on the Clonbullogue-Rathangan road.

Stories & lore →

02 / 07

The pubs.

None of these are themed Irish pubs, because they don't need to be. A few that earn the trip:

Richie's Bar

The local, and effectively the only one

Village pub, near the Rathangan road

The village pub, sometimes known locally as The Forge. In a place this size it is the social anchor - the bar where the GAA and the parachute crowd and the farmers all end up. Do not expect a gastropub or a craft list. Expect a pint, a fire, and the chance of falling into conversation with someone who has either just jumped out of a plane or knows everything about the parish.

03 / 07

Stories & lore.

The reason to come back. The things every local will eventually tell you about, usually after the second pint.

Born near Clonbullogue, 1887

Eamon Broy, Collins's man in the Castle

Ned Broy grew up near Clonbullogue and joined the Dublin Metropolitan Police, where he ended up as a clerk inside G Division - the political intelligence branch working out of Great Brunswick Street. From the inside he copied sensitive files and fed them to Michael Collins through an intermediary at Capel Street Library. In April 1919 he smuggled Collins into the G Division archives overnight so Collins could read the files on himself and identify the detectives hunting him. Broy survived the War of Independence, took the Treaty side, and served as Commissioner of the Garda from 1933 to 1938; the auxiliary unit raised on his watch was nicknamed the Broy Harriers. He is buried at Coolygagen cemetery on the Clonbullogue-Rathangan road, with a monument at the graveside. For a flat bog village, that is a remarkable man to have produced.

Skydiving over the bog

The Irish Parachute Club

Clonbullogue Airfield, about two kilometres west of the village, is the home of the Irish Parachute Club. It is a modest operation - a single east-west grass runway around 770 metres long and a small number of aircraft - but it is one of the main skydiving centres in the country, and most fine weekends and bank holidays see intense jumping. The flat, open, sparsely built bog is exactly the landscape a drop zone wants. If you are anywhere near the village on a clear Saturday and see parachutes stacking up over the fields, this is the source.

The only part of Offaly torched in the Rebellion

Burned in 1798

Clonbullogue has the grim distinction of being, by local account, the only part of Offaly burned during the 1798 Rebellion. The wider area was caught up in the violence of the rising on the Offaly-Kildare-Wexford fringe; the United Irish leaders Anthony Perry and Father Mogue Kearns were captured and hanged at nearby Edenderry. It is the kind of history that leaves no monument you can photograph, but it is why the older people in the parish know exactly what year you mean when you say the year of the burning.

What the antiquarians logged

Stones, churches and a sheela-na-gig

The heritage around Clonbullogue is scattered and low-key rather than headline. The Clonkeen stone, locally said to have been flung from Croghan Hill by Fionn MacCumhaill, sits in the townland. There are the ruins of Cloncrane Church, the remains of a togher - an ancient bog trackway - at Ballykilleen, a ring-barrow at Shean, and sheela-na-gig carvings recorded from Ballynowlart and Clonsast. None of it is signposted tourism. All of it is the ordinary deep archaeology of a bog parish that has been lived in for a very long time.

04 / 07

Things to do outside.

Wear waterproofs. Bring a sandwich. Tell someone where you're going if it's the mountain.

Village and Figile River loop There is no waymarked trail here. Walk the village from the crossroads, take in the Sacred Heart church on St Broughan's Terrace, and follow the quiet road down toward the Figile River. Flat, easy, and as much about the enormous bogland sky as about anything underfoot.

2-3 kmdistance

45 mintime

Coolygagen cemetery and the Rathangan road Head out the Clonbullogue-Rathangan road to Coolygagen cemetery, where Eamon Broy is buried with a monument at his graveside. A quiet country graveyard with a genuinely extraordinary tenant. Bring respect and good footwear for the verge.

short detour by car or on footdistance

30 mintime

Bog edge wander The Bog of Allen begins at the edge of the pasture island and runs out flat in every direction. The bog roads are walkable for the big skies, the heather and the silence, but treat them with respect - cutaway bog and drains are not a place to go wandering off the track, and there are no facilities once you leave the village.

as far as you likedistance

opentime

05 / 07

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar-May

The bog greens up and the light over the flat land is at its best. Drier underfoot than winter and the skydiving season is getting going at the airfield.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun-Aug

Long evenings and the most active months at the Irish Parachute Club - fine weekends mean canopies over the fields. The best window for the place to feel alive.

◉ Go

Autumn

Sep-Oct

The bog turns rust and brown and the low light suits the flat country. Quiet, which is the point of Clonbullogue.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov-Feb

Short days, bog fog and wet ground. The pub stays warm but there is little else to do. Beautiful if bleak midlands light is what you are after, hard going if it is not.

◐ Mind yourself

06 / 07

What to skip.

Honestly? Don't bother.

If a local was sitting beside you, this is the bit where they'd lean in.

Expecting a tourist village

Clonbullogue is a working bog village of about 400 people with one pub, a shop, a church and a GAA pitch. There is no visitor centre, no cluster of cafes, no scenic main street. Come for the quiet, the sky and the parachute club, not for a day out of attractions.

Wandering onto the bog alone

The Bog of Allen looks like open empty ground and is not safe to treat that way. Cutaway bog, drains and soft ground are real hazards. Stick to the roads and tracks.

Turning up at the airfield expecting a tour

Clonbullogue Airfield is a working private drop zone run by the Irish Parachute Club, not a visitor attraction. You can watch canopies from the public road, but if you actually want to jump, book a course or a tandem through the club in advance - do not just arrive.

Getting there.

By car

Clonbullogue sits at the junction of the R401 and R442. From Dublin it is about 1h 15m via the M4/M6 and Edenderry, which is 11 km north. From Tullamore it is roughly 40 minutes; from Portarlington about 20 minutes. You need a car here - this is the rural midlands.

By bus

Public transport is thin. Local Link services in the area connect the smaller villages to Edenderry and Tullamore, but check current timetables - frequency is low and not designed for visitors.

By train

The nearest railway station is Portarlington (about 20 minutes by car), on the Dublin-Cork and Dublin-Galway lines. Edenderry has no station.

By air

Dublin Airport (DUB) is about 1h 15m to 1h 30m by car. It is the only realistic option for international visitors.