Creeslough ( , locally ; ) is a village in County Donegal, Ireland, south of Dunfanaghy on the N56 road. The small village overlooks an arm of Sheephaven Bay, with the population of the surrounding area engaged mainly in agriculture, mostly livestock rearing. Name The English name 'Creeslough' (occasionally 'Cresslough') is an anglicised respelling of an Irish name, the modern official spelling of which is (including the definite article ). According to the Placenames Database of Ireland, this means "the gorge". Under the Official Languages Act 2003, only the Irish name of Creeslough electoral division has official status, because part of it is in the Gaeltacht, whereas Creeslough village is outside the Gaeltacht and its English name has equal status. is usually interpreted as +; where means "lake", while literally means "gullet, throat" and metaphorically can mean either a gap or gluttony. In the 1830s, John O'Donovan glossed the name as "Craoslaoch [sic] swallowing lake; throat lake", and Patrick Weston Joyce glossed it in 1875 as "Craos-loch — a lake that swallows up everything". In 2000, Lawrence Donegan wrote: Craos Loch in Irish, meaning Throat Lake or Gullet Lake. Why? Because there was a tiny lake at the top of the village that gathered a lot of rainwater from the surrounding hills and leaked only a little away through a tiny stream. Where did all the water go? It had been swallowed by the hungry lake, obviously. Why not call the village Hungry Lake? It wasn't poetic enough. Suggested alternative derivations are + "duck[s] throat", or (or variant ) "limit, border". Niall Ó Dónaill advised the Placenames Branch in 1962 that, although there was evidence that was the older Irish form, it had long been changed to . History Evidence of ancient settlement in the area include a number of ringfort, holy well, enclosure and burial sites in the townlands of Creeslough, Killoughcarran and Masiness. Nearby Doe Castle, a tower house with a surrounding bawn, dates from the 1420s. On 7 October 2022, an explosion at Creeslough destroyed a shop and Applegreen petrol station, as well as the adjoining apartment block, resulting in ten deaths and multiple injuries. Places of interest Nearby places of interest include: Doe Castle, a 15th-century castle of the MacSuibhne clan, restored between 2002 and 2005. It is perhaps best known as the place to which Owen Roe O'Neill returned to command the Irish Confederate's Ulster