The Augustinian Houses of the County Clare:
Clare, Killone, and Inchicronan

Inchicronan

The Site

The building lies in a prettily wooded district, at the end of a long tongue of land projecting into the Lake of Inchicronan, near Crusheen. The peninsula was once, it seems, cut into two islands; but they are now connected with each other and the northern shore by a causeway and boggy fields; even still, the ruins are isolated after unusually heavy rains.
We pass through open fields and bogs, tufted with the sweetly smelling bog myrtle, and vividly recalling on a bright summer day the joyous scenes in which the heroes of Finn loved to hunt as described in older poetry:—

“Brilliance of the season ever on the margin,
The summer swallow skims the wave,
The swift horses seek the pool.
The heath spreads out its long hair,
The weak fair bog-down grows.”^[13]

Passing the ivied and nearly featureless castle, we find the little ruin in a craggy field on the very edge of the lake, embedded in hawthorn, elder, huge hemlocks and nettles, often higher than a man.