This small Donegal town has a rather curious origin story; it wasn’t part of the original plantation plans for Ulster, yet seemingly appeared out of nowhere as a fully established settlement in 1618, whilst other more established centres like Raphoe and Rathmullan were still petitioning for official town status. The settlement sprouted up within the ancient parish of Taughboyne, whose name comes from Teach Baithen, meaning “the church of Baithen”, honouring the abbot who succeeded the famous Colmcille at Iona. Though attempts were made to construct a new church within the town proper, the original parish church at Taughboyne, about three kilometres north, remained the spiritual centre for the new community.

The town’s founding reads like a proper colonial contract. In the early 17th century, the land then known as “Dromtoolan alias Cashelduffe” was granted to Ludovic Hamilton, Duke of Lennox, with some rather specific conditions. He had four years to bring in thirteen English or Scottish settlers, preferably skilled craftsmen, and build homes for them. The surviving patent from the Public Record Office details further requirements: the corporation should have thirteen members, and the town needed to follow a particular layout. Interestingly, the document states the town’s dual purpose was both to defend loyal subjects in the area and to keep potential rebels in check. However, these grand plans hit a snag when the 1641 rebellion broke out, and the formal incorporation never quite materialised. By the 1650s, the Civil Survey simply called it a little village, and the census around 1659 counted just 37 adults; 19 English and Scots, and 18 Irish, making it the second smallest borough population in Ulster after Killybegs.

Despite its modest beginnings, St. Johnstown did manage to return members to parliament from 1671 until 1800, when the Act of Union dissolved the Irish Parliament. By then, the Hamiltons had sold the town to the Earls of Wicklow, who pocketed a tidy £15,000 in compensation for losing their parliamentary borough. The town’s layout remains straightforward to this day; one broad main street running east to west, designed to accommodate the Monday market, crossed by a narrower north-south street that passes the unfinished parish church. The modern Derry road that now cuts through the town is clearly a later addition, disrupting the original plantation street plan that has otherwise survived for over four centuries.