Begun 1602. Completed c.1605. The last years of the Nine Years War.
Mountjoy Castle
Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, arrived at the western shore of Lough Neagh in the summer of 1602 with a military column and a supply of locally-made brick. The Nine Years War - the confederation of Gaelic Ulster against Elizabethan expansion, led principally by Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone - had been grinding toward its end since the defeat at Kinsale in January 1601. Mountjoy was pressing deep into O'Neill's territory. On the same day his soldiers reached Brocagh, they had already destroyed the inauguration stone of the O'Neill at Tullaghogue, fifteen kilometres to the west. The castle they built here - a rectangular block with four spear-shaped angle towers, gun loops, local red brick over a stone base - was a statement of occupation. O'Neill submitted in March 1603. The castle remained strategically useful for the rest of the century, changing hands in the 1641 rising, again in the wars of the 1640s, and used by Williamite forces in 1690. The ruin on the hill is a scheduled monument, accessible from the village.
Founded 1923 as Mountjoy Emmetts.
Brocagh Emmetts GAC
The club was formed in 1923 under the name Mountjoy Emmetts - the castle on the hill giving the original name, Robert Emmet the inspiration for the rest. The name shifted to Brocagh in the late 1970s. The club plays Gaelic football in the Tyrone county competitions at junior and intermediate level. Their ground is on the Mountjoy Road. In 2019, Brocagh Emmetts claimed the Ulster Junior Club Football League title, defeating Magilligan from Derry in the final. The club also runs underage football through the parish.
St Brigid at Brocagh, St Patrick at Clonoe.
Clonoe Parish
The civil parish of Clonoe takes in the Brocagh area along with the surrounding townlands east of Coalisland. The old Church of St Michael at Clonoe, mentioned in the 1837 Topographical Dictionary, was a small ancient structure repaired in 1699. Within the Catholic parish the two principal chapels were at Clonoe itself and at Mountjoy - the latter built in 1835, the year of Catholic Emancipation's first generation. The Church of St Brigid at Brocagh serves the village today. The parish records held at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland and through the Archdiocese of Armagh are one of the better genealogical sources for east Tyrone families.