What is recorded here

Eel Weir is a stone fish trap on the Camoge River in County Limerick, built by the Cistercian monastery of Monasteranenagh to catch eels and pike for its kitchen. At suppression in 1540 the abbey still held sixteen townlands, a mill and these weirs, proof that the river fed the house as much as the land did. The stones still sit east of Monaster Bridge, half buried in water and silt, doing nothing now except remembering the pull of the current and the hunger of the monks.

In gently undulating low-lying pasture, 37m upriver from Monaster Bridge (LI031-009001-), on the Camoge River, which also forms a townland boundary between Monaster North and South. Cistercian monastery of Monasteranenagh (LI031-050004-) lies 170m to SSE. Annotated ‘Eel Weir’ on the 1840 ed. OSi map to E of Monaster Bridge. A second eel weir (LI031-050003-) lies 50m upriver to E. According to Power (1930, 46), ‘At the suppression, in 1540, the abbey [Monasteranenagh] was found possessed of a great estate – sixteen townlands, a mill and watercourse with eel and pike weirs in the Camoge’. Westropp (1889, 238), refers to a type of medieval fish trap in the vicinity of Monasteranenagh Abbey (LI031-050003-): ‘There are some remains of a detached building near the Cammogue, perhaps a mill, though the country people say that a rope from a net in the river rang a bell in it when a salmon was captured’. Remains of stone built fish weir visible in the Camoge River to the E of the bridge opposite Monasteranenagh Abbey. According to local information the river was last dredged at this point during drainage works in 1978. See attached Google Earth orthoimage and photographs taken by the ASI Compiled by: Alison McQueen and Vera Rahilly Date of upload: 27 October 2020

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