Lusk
cave or underground chamber; oral tradition says St MacCullin lived or was buried in a cave here, and Joyce also gives Lusca as a cave
A north Dublin town associated with St MacCullin, who founded a church here around 450. Its round tower, built in the 10th or 11th century, has nine storeys, more than any other round tower, and stands against a 15th-century Norman square tower holding medieval tombs. Vikings plundered and burned Lusk several times in the 8th and 9th centuries, and legend makes the district the birthplace of Emer, wife of Cú Chulainn.
Neolithic cist burials continue to turn up in Lusk, along with flint arrowheads. St MacCullin founded the church here around 450 and died around 497, and Vikings plundered and burned the place several times in the 8th and 9th centuries. The round tower of the 10th or 11th century is the only surviving part of the early Christian foundation; it stands 27 m high, originally nearly 32 m. In the 15th century a Norman square tower with three smaller corner towers was built against it, holding the tombs of James Bermingham (1527) and of Christopher Barnewall and his wife Marion Sherle (1589). The Church of Ireland church beside it was designed by Joseph Welland in 1847.
Drawn from the History section of the Wikipedia article on Lusk ↗, rewritten here and adding nothing it does not say; licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Straight-line distances from the town centre, from each site's documented coordinates.
- Clontarf · Good Friday 1014: Brian Boru's forces break Leinster and Dublin's Vikings — and Brian is killed praying in his tent. Now a quiet seafront suburb.
- Drumanagh promontory fort · A headland fort that has yielded Roman coins, brooches and pottery — the strongest evidence of a Roman trading post (or a Romanised Irish king) in Ireland.
All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.
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