Corboy Church, the Clintons and the Crows
by Eilish Feeley, A.G.I. Affiliate
Tucked into the countryside a few miles from Longford town and just off the N4 to Edgeworthstown is Corboy Church which has the distinction in Ireland of being the oldest surviving Presbyterian church in continual use outside of Ulster. Also, the Presbyterian congregation at Corboy is the oldest surviving presbyterian congregation in the Irish midlands. I visited Corboy in early March 2025 on a beautiful early Spring evening and took a stroll around the church and graveyard on the site. There was a touch of frost with the hint of turf smoke in the air, that lovely rural smell that evokes memories from childhood. The only noise to be heard during my visit was the cacophony of crows who were hard at work building their nests in the ancient trees around the site. Corboy just oozes history and like any avid genealogist I was taken with the surnames on the eighteenths and nineteenth century gravestones around the church …. Surnames such as Buchanan, McDowell, Denniston, Allen and Campbell abound throughout the graveyard with many of these surnames indicating Scottish ancestry.
The present church was built in 1729 by Rev. James Bond on the site of an earlier wooden structure and is rated as nationally important in the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage (NIAH) (1). The barn style church, unusual in the Irish midlands, is of a type most commonly found in the north of the island. The NIAH describes it as a detached six-bay single-storey barn-type presbyterian meeting house which was built or rebuilt c.1729 and altered around 1880. This style of church building was typical of the dissenter tradition within the Reformed Church. The building has a steeply sloped, high pitched roof and two entrance doors. Attached to the rear of the church is a two storied residence which was used by theminister until the Manse building next door to the present church was built in 1847.
The history of Corboy congregation includes the stories of many notable people and their descendants. Among them Col. Charles Clinton, an elder of the congregation at Corboy who helped to organise a group exodus to North America in 1729 to escape the persecution of the penal laws. The group left Longford on 5th of May of that year and set sail on The George and Ann from Dublin on the 20 th May. Charles Clinton’s diary, which he kept during the journey, recorded the trials and tribulations of the ocean crossing which saw an outbreak of measles and other diseases. The ship spent 20 weeks on the Atlantic, and more than 80 passengers succumbed to illness with their bodies buried at sea. His wife Elizabeth Denniston and young family accompanied him on the journey, by the time they reached America two of his children had died. Despite this rocky start to their American dream, many of this congregation eventually occupied important military and political positions in their adopted land. One of Charles Clinton’s sons, George, became 4th Vice President of the USA from 1805-1812 (2).
As I left Corboy church and walked back through the surrounding trees, I wondered about those who had left the congregation to embark on that difficult crossing to the New World in 1729, the emotions they felt at leaving their friends and families behind but also the excitement and hope as they embarked on a brave journey. And as I closed the gate behind me, I took a final look up at the current flock of busy nesting crows – no doubt these are the descendants of those crows who watched from on high the comings and goings around Corboy church for the last three hundred years or more – if only they could talk.
1 Corboy Presbyterian Church, CORBOY, Corboy Upper, LONGFORD – Buildings of Ireland (accessed 1 March 2025)
2 Corboy Presbyterian Church & School, A History of Corboy Presbyterian Church and School: A Compilation of Various Articles that relate to Corboy and the Memories of Victor Murphy (1923-2013) (Longford, 2013) pp 15-18.
