Description : Lusk (Irish: Lusca) is a small town in Fingal, Ireland. The town is located about 20 km (12 mi) north of Dublin city centre. The settlement of Lusk has been associated with St. MacCullin since c. AD 450. The place also had associations with St. Maur, who nowadays connects with Rush (RosEo). The ruins of St. Maur's original church, or more likely its later replacement, are at the top of Whitestown hill, firmly in the parish of Rush. Lusk was plundered and burned several times in the 8th and 9th centuries by marauding Vikings, who eventually built a permanent settlement at Dubh Linn, now Dublin. The only tangible remnant of the early Christian foundation at Lusk is the round tower. It is adjacent to a Norman square tower built against it in the 15th century. This building has three matching (smaller) towers at its corners. The square tower holds several medieval tombs including that of James Bermingham (1527) and the double-effigy tomb of Christopher Barnewall and his wife Marion Sherle (1589). The Church of Ireland church dates from 1847 by Joseph Welland and was designed in an Early English Gothic style. While standing on the right side of the castle looking up one of the bricks in the building has a stone image of St. Macullin's face. The round tower at Lusk was built in the 10th or 11th century. It stands 27 m high (originally nearly 32 m high). Inside are nine storeys including the basement making it highest number of any round tower. Each floor is lit by single-lintelled windows which vary in size. Two of these windows have been blocked up where they face unto the wall of the belfry. Just under the cap there are 4 windows facing the cardinal points. They are quite small and narrow. The original conical cap has been replaced by a flat timber roof. The flat-headed doorway, which originally would have been some 2.6 m above the ground level is now less than 1 m above the ground. Fingal is the name given to that part of present-day North County Dublin bounded by the Tolka River to the south and the Delvin River to the north. Fingal is considerably older than Dublin City, which was established by the Norsemen c. 900 AD around the 'dubh linn' or black pool. Before Christendom and St. MacCullin, the area was the Celtic "Bregia", birthplace of Cú Chullain's wife, Emer whose clan resided in or near what we now know as Lusk.
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