Settlement cluster, Loughgur, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Settlement Sites
On the Ordnance Survey map, this cluster of early medieval house foundations on the eastern shore of Lough Gur goes by the name 'The Spectacles', a label that turns out to be based on a misreading.
What looked from the surface like two circular huts sitting side by side, giving the impression of a pair of lenses, proved on excavation to be one genuine structure and one accidental arrangement of outcropping rock. The site sits on a narrow shelf of land at a place recorded on the older six-inch OS map as 'Drumlaegh', with a rock face rising sharply to the east and the ground dropping almost vertically to the lakeside road on the west.
Excavations carried out by S. P. Ó Ríordáin in the mid-twentieth century uncovered not one structure but a small working settlement. The main dwelling, House A, was roughly circular with an internal diameter of around 4.5 metres. Its lower walls were built in the manner common to the period, two stone faces with rubble packed between them, while postholes inside and outside the wall suggest the upper portion was of mud or turf, with the thatched roof carried on timber posts rather than resting on the masonry itself. A paved path ran from the west-facing doorway, past a protective porch, to a flight of rough steps descending to the lake. Two hearths were found inside. Separated from House A by ancient field walls were an oval post-built structure, a long narrow animal shelter, and a rectangular stone house measuring roughly 4 metres by 3.6 metres internally. The objects recovered, including fragments of bronze ring-pins, iron knives, bone combs, spindle whorls, jet bracelets, glass beads, and quern stones used for grinding grain, closely resembled finds from the nearby Carraig Aille sites, leading Ó Ríordáin to place the occupation broadly between the 8th and 11th centuries AD.
The site lies on the eastern shore of Lough Gur, roughly 50 metres from the waterline, with Bolin Island visible to the south and a standing stone approximately 160 metres to the west-southwest. As a designated National Monument subject to a preservation order dating to 1941, the remains are protected, and visitors should take care around the exposed stonework. The foundations are low and partly obscured, so patience and a reasonable eye for earthworks help considerably. Lough Gur itself is unusually dense with prehistoric and early medieval monuments, and the Spectacles settlement sits quietly among them, easy to pass without noticing and rewarding to those who stop.