Boley Castle was an impressive tower, 55 feet high and over 20 feet square, on rising ground just North of Clonmines. It was to here that Adam, the son of Patrick of Duffry and Katherine Bagenal, moved on his marriage to Margaret Masterson in 1701. Thomas Masterson, Margaret's ancestor, was another Elizabethan settler who had been Anthony's great rival in the 1570s. On her death around 1718 she left 5 children and Adam shortly married again, taking as his bride Mary Forde of Ballinafad, Coolgraney. The Fordes are an interesting family - Mary's uncle had inherited a large estate at Seaforde in County Down, and her nephew was the father in law of the unfortunate united Irishman Anthony Perry. Her brother Matthew bought land neighboring the Colclough's at Dunmain, but after Adam's death in 1734 Mary moved from Boley to the comfort of a house in New Ross. Her stepson Richard and son Caesar, were lynched as United Irishmen by the gangs of Orangemen who terrorised Wexford after the 1798 rebellion. It is known that three of her sons married - Adam in 1760, Anthony in about 1740 and Thomas in 1752. It is not at present known whether Richard or Caesar married - they were both well into their 70s when they were murdered and might well have had children. There are no further records of Adam junior after his marriage in 1760, so he may well have emigrated. Thomas and Anthony were however prolific. Anthony's son Richard founded the coach builders Colclough and Hoey of 22 Duke Street, Dublin. He left the firm to his nephew John. Anthony's second son, Adam, died in Kilkenny in 1817, apparently childless. Anthony's third son, William (born 1756) married an Eleanor Noble and farmed in Clomantagh. Apart from John the coach builder , all of William's children emigrated to Canada.

Mary's third son, Thomas, who was born in 1726 is probably the ancestor of most of the Colcloughs still in Ireland. It is not known where he lived after his marriage in 1752, but with the exception of his son Timothy who went to Dublin, his children seemed to have gone with their cousins to Clomantagh and Tubrid. To the North West of Kilkenny City is a small tongue of the county that is bounded to the North by Laois and to the South by Tipperary. On the West face of the Slieveardagh Hills is the village of Tubrid, looking down towards Urlingford. This was an area of significant military importance in ancient times and the Shorthalls built several castles to defend the pass from Munster into Leinster. The high lands were of poor quality and no great estates were built here. Along the valley however a few estates were established. Just to the West of Freshford, at the beginning of the pass, the De Montmorencys lived at Uppercourt. Next to them the St George Family lived at Kilrush. At Woodsgift and Balief were other branches of the St George, and to the South, just in Tipperary, the Bakers and subsequently the Ponsonbys had a great estate at Kilcooly. Minor estates were those of the Cromwellian Gores at Goresgrove, the Lodges of Lodge Park at Freshford and Wilton, Bellevue and Borrismore at Urlingford. Tubrid itself is a very minor village, not on the main road. It is on the South of the river, while the main road runs on the North side. A road crosses the river at Clomantagh and runs along the side of the mountain, leading eventually down to Killenaule. Along this little road are the townlands of Kyle, Shrah, Tubrid and Barna, all around Tubrid Village and all within 2 miles of Clomantag. 3 miles further on is Goresgrove. The southern end of the hills became a minor coal mining centre in the early 19th century, providing ready employment for unskilled labourers. The more skilled could have worked at Clomantagh Mill which was built at the end of the 18th century and closed in the middle of the 19th century when the mill manager sabotaged the plant by releasing all the grain into the mill race and completely clogging it. At its height it employed over 100 people.

Why several families of Colclough settled here in the 18th century is not at all clear. Thomas Colclough had married a Mary Costello of Queens Co., but it seems probable that she came from the middle of Laois, near Timogue and Timahoe. There is a strong tradition of family names, which makes genealogical research even more confusing. Johns, Williams and Samuels occur regularly and at one time there were three separate families of William and Eleanor. Their religion is also confusing. Catholic and Church of Ireland families lived next door to each other. Their social position is another conundrum. While some may have been tenants of Goresgrove House, which apparently belonged to either the Mitchell or Phelan family, the other houses were all fairly minor farmhouses. However one of the daughters married a De Montmorency, Thomas's son William married Eleanor Eaton Caldbeck, whose family had estates in Antrim and whose relations included the High Sheriff of Dublin and William Caldbeck, K.C. and Colonel of the Lawyers Artillery in 1798, and two of the sons became solicitors. There is a record of an Agmondisham, living in Kilkenny, who became an excise officer after his son married the niece of J.D. Fitzsimon, Controller General of Excise, in 1807. Shortly after this a Patrick also became an excise officer.

Richard founded a fashionable coach building company in Duke Street, Dublin and built a state coach for the Lord Mayor, Thomas and William became very successful middlemen, leasing large estates in Meath and Offaly. Richard's great nephews included two architects - Stedman Colclough and Noble Colclough who designed Firmount in Naas. Richard the coach builder's wife was Jane Scheneval whose niece was apparently Mary Jane Kirwan who married Richard's nephew, and heir to the coach building business, John.

It would appear probable that she was related to Jane Stafford Kirwan, the Dublin barrister's daughter, who married Caesar. This might account for the coldness between the Dublin family and the Tintern family. Others emigrated to Australia, Canada, Brazil, England, Scotland, India, South Africa and America. Sergeant William Thomas Colclough was awarded "The Queen's Scarf" during the Boer War, one of only eight such awards, Her Majesty having only crocheted eight scarves. His grandfather was a William who had emigrated from Ireland in the early 19th century and his grandson GF Colclough of Banff Alberta did an immense amount of research, the whereabouts of which is not at present known. Lydia Colclough's grandchildren William Eaton Thompson and John Thompson, were born at the Eldorado Gold Mine in Australia and whilst rounding the Cape of Good Hope.

In passing it should be noted that the genealogies of three other branches of the Colclough family are at present completely unresearched. In 1807 one Jane Roche married a William Colclough. Her uncle, J.D. Fitzsimon, was the Controller General of Excise and William's father Agmondisham became an Excise Officer in Kilkenny shortly afterwards. He is to be found with the Kilkenny Colcloughs at Clomantagh in the Tithe Applotment Surveys in the 1820s. It may be his grandson Agmondisham William who had five sons, all born in London. This is might be the same Agmondisham who witnessed the will of William Colclough, vitner, father of another Agmondisham, of Dame Street in 1805. In the will that he wrote in 1824 Caesar left a legacy to an Agmondisham, possibly the same man. A connection of some interest is that William mentions a leasehold house in the Crescent, Marino. 25 years later this house is occupied by Susanna Colclough, widow of Henry Colclough, great grandson of Henry of Kildavin. One son may have been the Patrick who died in Tramore in 1818 and maybe it was his widow who set up a school in Clonmel the following year. His daughter Anne married Peter Roe in New Ross in 1809, a banker who had been brought in to sort out the mess left behind by the failure of Colclough's Bank.  The William who is believed to be the father of the Agmondisham William was, according to his will, married to Mary - (believed to be Mary Sheridan, a relation of the playwright and politician) and names in his will hs son Agmondisham and his 4 daughters, Mary, Charlotte, Margaret and Mary Anne. He notes that he is in failing health in May 1805. So maybe there are two Williams? Bernard Colclough of Waterford suggests that Agmondisham is of the Crowsgrove family, which was at one stage know as Colclough's Grove. It is a house of no great architectural pretension in a remote setting at the back of Kildavin, above Kilcarry Bridge. However, apart from the fact that Adam of Crowsgrove was selling land to another Adam Colclough, presumably Adam of Duffry, in 1759 and that Adam of Crowsgrove married in 1760 nothing else is know of this family. In the absence of other evidence it may be presumed that this Adam is the son of Adam of Boley.  Things are somewhat further confused by more recent information from Bernard Colclough that Agmondisham Vesey Colclough, son of the Great Caesar, had an illegitimate son Agmondisham Grague Colclough, who married Mary McGrath daughter of a Mr Seymour of Nenagh and fathered Anne who married Peter Roe, William who married Jane Roche, Harriet who married William Roe and William who married Mary Sheridan.

The Colclough family of Wicklow first appear with Thomas Coakley of Francton, in 1721. The next reference is to Joseph Colclough of Kilmurray, farmer, whose will was proved in 1774. He was probably a relation of Kane Colclough of Hazelhatch, Co Kildare, publican, who in 1782 at the age of 72 married an 18 year old Miss Caulfield of Millbrook, Co Offaly. The descendants of the Hazelhatch family are still living in the Celbridge area, some achieving success in the popular music field, whilst the Wicklow family seem to have died out in the male line, and the pub still exists on the bank of the Grand Canal. As a deed for Joseph Colclough's land was witnessed by Lancastrians it may be that Joseph was himself an immigrant from Lancashire, rather than a descendant of Anthony. On the other hand the name Kane might suggest some connection with Caleb of Cork and possibly the Cromwellians.

The third branch are the most confusing - The Colcloughs of Cork and Kerry. The earliest reference is John Colclough, born 1710, son of Caleb Colclough of Cork, enters Trinity 1727. This would suggest that his father was a rich Protestant. By 1850 there were Timothy and Robert Colcloughs with fairly large estates in Cork, and about a dozen other Colclough families in Cork and Kerry with anything from 50 acres to 5/- cottages. Assuming Caleb was born before 1690, who was his father? Caleb is from the Hebrew, meaning bold, and was in vogue with Puritans, Quakers and Calvinists. Could he have been a Quaker - there were plenty in Cork. Could he have been one of William's soldiers, or a merchant who came with the Williamite Army. Possible, but the name Caleb does not appear in any of the 2,000 16th, 17th and 18^th century birth and marriage records for English Colcloughs. Was Caleb descended from the Cromwellian Captain Thomas Colclough, a Staffordshire Colclough who appears in 1655 in Wexford with a troop of 62 men, and disappears just as quickly, having acquired some of the lands of his kinsman Dudley of Duffry? Maybe he went off to Cork and became a merchant - there were several Colcloughs trading with Africa and America from the 1650s onwards - all imagination at the moment, but Bernard Colclough of Waterford tells me that he has evidence that he is descended from the Cromwellian Thomas, who was apparently a Staffordshire Colclough. The third possibility is that when the Mac Kehillys were first calling themselves Coakley, maybe some bright spark decided to spell it Colclough. Maybe a clerk, who knew that spelling. Maybe Mac Kehilly himself, to associate himself with a family that was at that time fairly powerful in Leinster - tho' why that should have impressed a Munster man is not clear. He did however clearly have ambition - sending his son to Trinity. There are answers to be found, possibly in The Registry of Deeds, or if one were to find Caleb's will, which he would surely have written. All the Cork and Kerry Colcloughs now living in the South West of Ireland spell their name Coakley, so to differentiate them from the Leinster Colcloughs is well nigh impossible, especially as there will also be amongst them descendants of Sir Vesey's illegitimate son by Mary Connors, Vesey

Another branch that is extant are the Colcloughs of Templediugan, who have held the same land since the first half of the 18th century when it was apparently given to them by the "Great" Caesar Colclough, a man to whom Ulick Sadlier also attributed great and generous potency. Bernard Colclough of Waterford has more information about this branch of the family.

Outlying families such as Richard Colclough of Antrim, and Thomas Colclough of Dublin, mariner, all pose their problems of identification, but as more records become available it is probable that more answers will appear. And of course there is Mr Colclough , the noted piper and author of Colclough's Tutor to the Uilean Pipes, published circa 1830

In closing it might be relevant to note some of the 20^th century variant spellings of Colclough:- Cokeley, Cokely, Cockle, Coakley, Coakeley, Coakly, Colcough, Coclough, Colcloughley, Colcolough, Colcleugh and even Cokerly!