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LOUGHREA |
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LOUGHREA , on the main road to Ballinasloe and ten miles southeast
of Athenry, is like Portumna in that it's a lakeside market town. But
it's much smaller, and tiny Lough Rea can't compare with the beauty of
Lough Derg for a setting. In the thirteenth century, Richard de Burgo
founded a Carmelite monastery here, and it still stands in an excellent
state of preservation. The town also has a late nineteenth-century
cathedral , whose interior demonstrates the development of the modern
Dublin School of Stained Glass - an acquired taste. Much earlier
religious art is on display next door in the Loughrea Museum (by
appointment only; tel 091/841212; free). This small museum includes
episcopal vestments and carved crucifixes from the seventeenth century,
beautifully simple silver and gold chalices from as early as 1500, penal
crosses and a few rare woodcarvings from the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries. The Kilcorban Virgin and Child , which is also on display
here, is the earliest of only three such carvings that have been found
in Ireland.
In a field two miles to the north of Loughrea, near Bullaun, stands the
Turoe Stone . A superb, rounded pillar-stone, this is decorated with the
bold swirls of Celtic La Tène art, a style found more typically in
Brittany. The finest of its kind in Ireland, it dates from the third or
second century BC and was probably a phallic fertility stone, used in
pagan rituals. There are a couple of fine B&Bs in this area: Mrs Pauline
Burke's Four Seasons , Athenry Road (tel 091/541414;
£40-55/¬50.79-69.84), and Mrs Rose Plower's La Riasc , Clostoken (tel
091/841069; £33-40/¬41.90-50.79), three miles out of town on the Dublin-Galway
road. Loughrea also has two fine hotels : the cosy well-established
O'Dea's , a converted Georgian town house on Bride St (tel 091/841611,
www.commerce.ie/odeashotel ; £70-90/¬88.88-114.28), and the newly
renovated Meadow Court , two miles out of town on the main Dublin road (tel
091/841051, meadowcourthotel@eircom.net ; £70-90/¬88.88-114.28), which
has modern, comfortable rooms and a restaurant which serves immaculately
prepared traditional meals such as steak and lamb.
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