Lusk in north Dublin County has not just one Round Tower but four. However only one of them is ‘the real thing’. The village’s name is also unusual, it comes for the Irish, ‘Lusca’ meaning ‘grave’. That grave belonged to Maccullin who founded a community there in the fifth century. A huge vault is said to be buried below the round tower and holds his body, buried around 496, with about 18 bishops who succeeded him.
Maccullin lived in St Patrick’s time. He left his home in Leinster for ‘Cabrinum’ (where?) to discover more about the new teaching and is said to have gone as far as Rome. On his return to Leinster he founded at least twelve communities with Lusk his final home.
Today the only reminder of his influence is the Round Tower built about five hundred years after his death. Such towers are often said to be look-outs to give warning against attack but their height would also give away their location and they were attacked by Vikings, who could see it from the sea, and ambitious Irish kings, coming overland.
When the Normans arrived they changed the name of the church from ‘Maccullin’s’ to that of the Blessed Virgin (they were not interested in promoting Irish heritage). They built a stone church in 1180 in the shape of a square, incorporating the original tower and adding three ‘round towers’ at the corners. However the original tower remains more or less intact and is the tallest.
In 1839 the roof of the church was blown off and in 1847 a new church replacing it kept the towers.
Today few in Lusk seem to remember Maccullin or his achievements. There is a new community centre at the edge of the site, where an old cottage stood (the building nearest the towers in an old photo) but is more involved in current community activities that remembering the past.
When the ‘new’ church was built in 1847 many of the old monuments that it preserved were left outside unprotected. However the graveyard remained popular with the local gentry. The following memorial to one of them, Sir Robert Echlin, was composed by his wife ‘a lady of letters’ in 1757:
‘Here lies an honest man without pretence,
Blessed with plain reason and common sense.
Calmly he looked on either life and, here
Saw nothing to regret, or there to fear.
From Nature’s temperate feast rose satisfied,
Thanked heaven that he had lived, and that – he died.’
The same might also apply to Maccullin.
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