Carraig Ó gCoinnigh, the rock of the candle
Carrigogunnell Castle
Three kilometres north of the village, a ruined tower house sits on a 60-metre plug of volcanic rock looking out over the Shannon Estuary. There has been a fortification here since at least the 13th century; the tower you see now was largely the work of the O'Briens in the 15th century. It changed hands repeatedly through the Desmond wars, was held against the Williamites in 1691, and was slighted - deliberately blown up so it could never be defended again - in September of that year after the second siege of Limerick. The folklore is better than the history: the name means rock of the candle, after a hag named Grana who lit a candle on the rock each night, and any sailor who saw it and did not look away was found dead in the morning. A local hero put out the candle and broke the spell. The climb is short but the footing is loose, and the view from the top is the best thing in this corner of Limerick.
A 1750s cabin, rebuilt by hand in 2018
The Hedge School Cottage
At Newtown, near Clarina, stands a small cottage built around 1750 that became a hedge school in the years when Catholic education was driven underground - children taught their letters in a labourer's cabin because the law would not let them be taught anywhere else. By the 2010s it had fallen to ruin. A group of local volunteers rebuilt it stone by stone in 2018, without grant money, and it now stands alongside the Sailor's Haggard - a memorial to the fisherfolk who worked the tidal waters here - with a boatshed, a boat built locally by Peter Byrnes, and a dancing square. The children of the parish school buried a time capsule on the site in 2018, set to be opened in 2068. It is a community project rather than a polished attraction, and it is open by arrangement rather than on a turnstile.
Spring Rice of Mount Trenchard, Lords Monteagle
The Tervoe monument
On the Tervoe estate near Clarina stands a commemorative monument tied to the Spring Rice family, the Limerick landlords who became the Barons Monteagle of Brandon. Thomas Spring Rice (1791-1866) was a Limerick MP and Chancellor of the Exchequer; a Celtic-revival high cross was later raised here around 1900 to his eldest son, Stephen Edmond Spring Rice. The big house at Tervoe is long demolished, like so many of these estates, but the monument and the parkland survive as a reminder of who owned this stretch of the estuary before the parish was the parish.