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Cliffoney, officially Cliffony , is a village in north County Sligo, Ireland. It lies on the N15 national route at its junction with the R279. It is only three kilometres away from Mullaghmore which is popular with surfers. Cliffoney has historical connections to Lord Palmerston, British Prime Minister and Father Michael O'Flanagan, vice president and later President of Sinn Féin, who was known as the Republican Priest. Brigid MacGonigal, mother of Harry Clarke, was a native of Cliffoney. There are several megalithic monuments close to the village, including Creevykeel Court Tomb. There are also several ringforts and cashels in the area. Saint Brigit's well has a cross slab, probably dating to the eight century, with a swastika carved in the top of the cross.

The oldest buildings in Cliffoney are the five megalithic tombs close to the village in the townlands of Creevykeel, Creevymore and Cartronplank. Creevykeel, considered one of the finest examples of its kind in Ireland, was excavated by the Harvard Archaeological Mission in 1935. Creevykeel is in state care and is maintained by the Office of Public Works. The other sites are on private property.

Saint Bridget's well is located on private land close to the village of Cliffoney. The well is located within a large ringfort some 40 meters in diameter which is mostly ploughed out on the south side, but is in good condition on the north side. Beside the well is an early Christian cross slab known as the Cliffoney Cross, thought to date to the eighth century and contemporary with the many carved slabs on Inishmurray. The well was the site of an ancient cattle fair held annually on 1 February. A shrine with a statue of Saint Bridget was erected in the 1950s.</blockquote>

The lands around Cliffoney were granted to James Byrne after the Cromwellian conquests in the mid 1600s. After 1690 the lands were granted to Sir John Temple. The title Viscount Palmerston was created in 1723. The Palmerston family were absentee landlords, leaving the management of their estates to middlemen. The second Viscount "contributed generously to local charities in Romsey, but he had no feelings of obligation towards his Irish tenants, and never invested any money in his lands in Sligo." Upon the sudden death of the second Viscount in 1802, the Cliffoney estates were inherited by his oldest son, Henry John Temple, better known as the third Viscount, Lord Palmerston. The young Lord Palmerston visited his Sligo estates, consisting of some 10,000 acres, for the first time in 1808. He found a destitute tenantry renting small plots from middlemen, who set the land to tenants in rundale, a system of communal occupation under which an individual tenant might from time to time hold many tiny detached plots. In the early nineteenth century huge tracts of Ahamlish were destroyed by shifting sands, but Palmerston sought to bring the bogs there, as well as the sands ruined by sand, into cultivation. Palmerston began a building programme, renovating the old Market House which became a hotel, the Cliffoney Inn in 1820. A boys school was built next door in 1824 and a girls school at the north end of the village in 1826, replacing the old hedge school in Ahamlish. Palmerston immediately clashed with the Catholic priest Fr. John McHugh, the priest forbidding children attend either school unless a Catholic teacher was employed. "In the build up to Catholic Emancipation, in February 1828, religious tensions caused a riot in Cliffoney with extra police required to calm the 239 strong crowd." A parochial house called Palmerston Glebe was built in Creevymore for the use of the Catholic priests, with four acres of land attached. Palmerston hired an estate manager named John Lynch to oversee drainage and reclamation projects and built a two story house called Rundale cottage. In the 1830s a tree nursery was established at Rundale. O'Flanagan, a widely travelled curate with strong nationalist, socialist and republican ideals, may have been moved by Bishop Bernard Coyne for his support of the Sligo Dock Strike in May 1913. One of O'Flanagan's first initiatives was to write to Colonel Ashley of Classiebawn Castle, and he secured the old school house as a community hall for the villagers. Upon discovering social inequality in land redistribution, he led the villagers on a campaign against the Congested Districts Board to secure rights to cut turf on the Cloonerco Bogs adjacent to Cliffoney. This action, which began on 29 June 1915 became known as the Cloonerco Bog Fight. The case simmered on all summer, and the villagers harvested large quantities of turf which was distributed throughout the locality. Eventually the case was settled in favour of the people of Cliffoney. At the graveside O'Flanagan recited the funeral prayers in Irish before his friend Padraig Pearse made his incendiary speech. In October O'Flanagan attended a tillage meeting held in Sligo Courthouse, where T. W. Russell was campaigning on behalf of the British Government, for increased tillage production to aid the war effort.

A company of Volunteers was set up in Cliffoney with the guidance of Fr. O'Flanagan and Alec McCabe. In November, 1915 I was introduced, with a few other men in the district, into the I. R. B. (Irish Republican Brotherhood) by the late William Gilmartin and Alec McCabe, then a National Teacher in Sligo. The I. R. B. Circle at that time consisted of eight members and was later increased to twelve William Gilmartin and myself then organized a Company of the Irish Volunteers in Cliffoney area. At that time we had a Catholic Curate the late Father Michael O'Flanagan, a great Irishman and strong supporter of the Republican Movement. He gave us every assistance and encouragement and advised the young men of the parish to join the Irish Volunteers. In all, forty men joined the Cliffoney Company. The Cliffoney Company took over the Old Boys' School, and renamed it after Fr. O'Flanagan. The building was as a drilling and parade hall, even though it was just across the street from the R. I. C. barracks. The Cliffoney Company were out marching in uniform for Saint Patrick's Day 1916. In his report at the end of March the County Inspector mentioned that a branch of the Irish Volunteers had been formed at Cliffony and that other branches were in the process of being formed. He reported that the Cliffony Volunteers had paraded to the number of fifty on St. Patrick's Day wearing uniforms. They attended Mass at Cliffony and then "paraded the roads." Their leaders, William Gilmartin and Andrew Conway, carried revolvers, he reported. On the same day, he said. Alec McCabe led a parade of 69 "Sinn Féiners" in Ballymote. McCabe was reported as wearing the uniform of the Irish Volunteers and the others wearing Irish Volunteer armbands. They were ready for action a month later for the Easter Insurrection 1916, with orders to march along the route to Sligo capturing R. I. C. barracks along the way, but stood down when Eoin MacNeil's countermanding order came from Dublin. The Cliffony Volunteers mobilised in the early hours of Easter Monday, 60 strong, including Fianna boys. At the break of day they were ready to advance on Sligo when a messenger arrived cancelling all active operations pending further orders from H. Q. The Volunteers remained in readiness for over a week in the hope of taking part in the rebellion but with the surrender in Dublin all hope ended and they disbanded. "On Sunday April 30th, the day after the surrender in Dublin, a parade was held by the Irish Volunteers in Cliffony. No arms were carried."

The R. I. C. barracks in Cliffoney, occupying the corner opposite the church, hall and hotel, was constructed on Lord Palmerston's orders in 1842, after some surveyors in his employment were beaten up by disgruntled locals. At the time he was having his land "squared" which entailed reorganising landholdings and leases on his Ahamlish estates.</blockquote>The burnings continued over a number of nights throughout North Sligo. Several cottages in Grange village and the Temperance hall were burned, as was Ballintrillick creamery. In Cliffoney, ten cottages along the main road, all belonging to prominent Sinn Féin members, and the Fr. O'Flanagan Sinn Féin Hall in the village were also burned, and the legend "Vacated Home of Murder Gang" was painted on the front of the hall. Gillespie's Tailor shop in the village was raided, and all the contents taken out into the street and burned. There is one shop in the village, Cliffoney Gala, which underwent a refurbishment in September 2017.

Cliffoney National school was opened in 1914, replacing the old schools built by Lord Palmerston. When the school opened, it was mixed, however, there were no mixed classes. In 1972, Mullaghmore School closed and its thirteen pupils transferred to Cliffoney National School. The School was renovated in the 1970s. In 1991, the wooden partition that split boys and girls classes was taken down, and the school was extended, with the addition of a new school pitch, which is still in use by pupils today. In 2007, there was major refurbishment and modernisation of the old part of the school and the addition of two new state of the art classrooms and a staffroom. The current principal of the school is Ms Eille Kennedy

On the 22nd of October 2014, President Michael D. Higgins attended the commemoration of the centenary of the opening of Cliffoney National School in 1914. He was accompanied by his wife Sabina Higgins. The pupils of Cliffoney NS performed for the president, with the president making a speech afterwards, speaking about W. B. Yeats, Classiebawn Castle, the school's history, and thanking the principal for the invitation and the pupils for their performance.

The Roman Catholic church is dedicated to Saint Molaise from Inishmurray island. The church was opened in 1828, replacing an older structure called Teampeall Bui down the hill and close to Saint Briget's well. Cliffoney church was closed for an extensive period in 1915 when the whole village united in protest against the Bishop of Elphin, Dr. Bernard Coyne, who had removed Fr. Michael O'Flanagan. The protest which was widely reported in the newspapers, continued for ten weeks until Christmas Eve 1915. The hall was burned at the end of October 1920 during the reprisals for the Moneygold ambush. It was later rebuilt and renamed the more neutral Cliffoney Parochial Hall.

Cliffoney Garda station was closed in early February 2013. Since then, Cliffoney and the surrounding areas have been served by Grange Garda Station. The station was handed over to the Cliffoney Development Group by Minister Brian Hayes in July 2014, with plans for the building to be used as a men's shed or tourist office. However, nothing has been done with the station since that time.