The name is derived from Leach-Snamha - the swimming flag. Long ago it was the chief town in the Barony of Clanmaurice, being an important town when Listowel was only a collection of a few thatched houses. As long as 1320 it was referred to as a flourishing town. Clanmaurice got its name from Maurice Fitzgerald, to whom the district was granted by Raymond Le Gros, at the time of the Norman Invasion. His son Thomas Fitzmaurice got the title of Baron of Lixnaw. There he built his castle about the year 1200, but very little remains of this castle to-day. In 1577 just before the date of the Desmond Rebellion the castle was besieged by the