[1] It is part of the Catholic parish Parteen-Meelick-Coonagh in the diocese of Limerick, with several generations of Coonagh families having attended Meelick National School (Scoil Mhuire Miliuc), County Clare.

[3] Also recovered were a copper-alloy stick pin, a needle, two saddle querns, burnt stone deposits, and very high quantities of animal bone (including worked antler handles, horn cores, and spindle whorls, indicating textile making), alder wood charcoal, and charred hazelnut shells.

The largest site uncovered was an Early Christian ditched enclosure at Coonagh West with a diameter of 40m that exploited a glacial drumlin, including a series of shallow gullies and oak post holes both internal and external to the enclosure, indicative of houses having been present dating back to the 16th century BC, a 27m trackway that enabled access to and from the river, pits, a hearth, as well as some pottery.

Archaeologists suggested that it may have been a type of ringfort that exploited a dry gravel mound in a predominantly wet and marginal landscape.

Iron Age activity was revealed in the Eastern end of the excavation area, including the base of a small metal-working furnace cut into the gravel, and the fragment of a crucible (a vessel in which metal was melted before being poured into a mould).

The Civil Survey of 1654 records that there were two fishing weirs on the Shannon in Coonagh, owned by the Earl of Thomond and Sir Nichollas Comyne.

Coonagh men used sickles to cut reed that grows along the shore of the Shannon estuary to sell as thatch, which was gathered into sheaves.

Prior to this, local farmers originally bought the reed as they were the only ones with access to the river through their own lands, either via horse and cart or later tractor and trailer.

The three fishermen in that crew were Thomas Davis, Robert Kenny, and Mike Grimes, whose families have fished the Shannon from Coonagh for generations.

[4] Traditional gandelows can still be seen moored on the banks of the Shannon in Coonagh West, near the toll gates north-west of the Limerick Tunnel on the M7 motorway that now passes through the area, as well as fishing cabins where the fishermen would keep their nets, oars, and other equipment.

The fishing season would officially open on 1 February and continue to July, although it was not unusual for some households to dine on salmon instead of turkey on Christmas day.

Coonagh fishermen had excellent knowledge of the estuary, knowing where every rock and snag was to avoid damaging their nets, especially at low tide.

The embankments appear not to have fared well and in 1808, their poor condition and failure to resist floods of Spring tides was lamented by Dutton (1808, 225) in his Statistical Survey of the County of Clare: "Nothing can possibly be worse than the embankments along the Shannon and Fergus to keep out flood-water....as no proper person is appointed... to superintend them, it often happens, that, from the indolence or ignorance of one proprietor, the property of many others is greatly injured; when a breach is made, it is so badly repaired, that it probably stands but a very short time."

This was not adequate however, as in 1843 it was observed that the river flats are still often overflowed by the Shannon; and along the high road that traverses them, stone pillars were raised at frequent intervals as indexes of its limits on such occasions.

To prevent future flooding, higher banks were erected along the Shannon using mud and clay from the brick holes in Coonagh, and the N18 dual-carriageway now runs parallel with, and over, these embankments.

Due to the floodwaters spreading fertile silt from the Shannon onto agricultural land, for many years after the flood Coonagh was a renowned spot for picking wild mushrooms.

[citation needed] According to papers preserved by University of Southampton Library's Digitisation Unit, Coonagh was in the mid-1800s home to a Coast Guard Station.

He mentions that only for the intervention of the Royal Navy at Green's Island (located near a creek that runs to Bunratty Castle[6]), the police would have been hurt as the fishermen chased them through the mud.

The names of these Coonagh men are also commemorated with their HMS Goliath comrades at the Plymouth Naval Memorial in Devon, UK.

These were John Grimes on the minesweeper Redcar, off Gravelines, France, and his older brother Michael on the drifter Deliverer, just outside Dublin Bay.

Patrick Davis of Coonagh lost his life when the minesweeper HMS Ascot was involved in action with a submarine, near the Farne Islands off the English coast on 10 November 1918, the day before the war ended.

He started his naval career by training for 3 months in Bantry on board HMS Collingwood, and then went on to travel to locations including Devonport, Liverpool, the Suez Canal, New York, and Australia, returning to being a fisherman in Coonagh in between as evidenced by Census records.

Many Coonagh men also played gaelic football with the now disbanded Lansdowne Rovers club, with nearby Na Piarsaigh in Caherdavin now being the nearest G.A.A.