Taughboyne

Taughboyne Irish: Teach Baoithín
County Donegal
Taughboyne Parish Church
Location
Data
Local Government
Dáil constituency:	Donegal

Taughboyne is a parish, in County Donegal, found five miles west of Londonderry (the latter across the border in the United Kingdom) on the road to Raphoe.

The name of the place is from the Gaelic Teach Baoithín, meaning 'House of Baithen'.

The parish contains the village and ancient disfranchised borough of St Johnston,

St Baithen, son of Brendan, a disciple and kinsman of St Columba, and his successor in the abbey of Hy, founded Tegbaothin in Tyrconnell: he flourished towards the close of the sixth century.

History

Samuel Lewis records of this parish in his A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland of 1837:

The parish, according to the Ordnance survey, comprises an area of 15,773¾ statute acres, including a large portion of bog: the land is chiefly arable, and of good quality. There are some extensive slate quarries, but the slates are small and of a coarse quality. The River Foyle, which bounds the parish on the east, is navigable for small boats to St. Johnstown, where a fair is held on 25 Nov.. The living is a rectory and vicarage, in the diocese of Raphoe, and in the patronage of the Marquess of Abercorn: the tithes amount to £1569. 4. 7¹⁄₂.; and the glebe, comprising 317 acres, is valued at £260. 6. 5½. per annum. The glebe-house was originally built in 1785, at a cost of £1,313, and subsequently improved at an expense of £1399 by the then incumbent. The church was erected in 1626; the Ecclesiastical Commissioners have lately granted £268 for its repair. In the Roman Catholic divisions the parish forms part of the union or district of Lagan, or Raymochy; the chapel was built about 1787. In the parochial school partly supported by an endowment of Col. Robertson, a school under the London Hibernian Society, and two schools supported by subscription, about 200 children are educated; there are also nine private schools, in which are about the same number of children, and five Sunday schools: two school-houses were erected by the Marquess of Abercorn around 1830. There is a dispensary for the poor.

References

• A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland By Samuel Lewis, 1837