My wife doesn’t like spiders at the best of times, and she certainly wasn’t happy to find this one crawling on the back of a piece of furniture in our living room. Neither was she impressed with me when, rather than evicting it, I went to fetch my camera, find a macro lens and flash and generally faff about the place until I was ready to start my arachnid portrait session. This is as close as I could persuade my wife to hold the ruler to the spider and it gives an idea of how big it is. I think it is called a giant house spider (tegenaria duellica) and they are harmless, and not at all linked to the false widow spiders (steatoda nobilis) that have been spotted in Ireland this year (and which do have a bit of a bite).
After the impromptu photo shoot, I released the spider into the garden (where hopefully it will devour one of my neighbours’ cats).