A fascinating portrait of 'little London'

The Royal Irish Academy has struck gold with its 21st Historic Towns Atlas which charts, in words, maps and pictures, the development of Limerick city from its Viking origins to 1900, writes EILEEN BATTERSBY

TOWN PLANS TELL the story of settlement formation and transformation and are a vital source when documenting the extent of habitation at any given time. The history of Limerick city began in the early 9th century with the arrival of the Vikings. It is not certain whether the longphort or ship camp was a permanent urban settlement, yet it was the base from which Viking raids were launched not only on the Shannon hinterland but as far north as Armagh. Built on King's Island in the great bend of the Shannon, Limerick has a rich, often dramatic story that historian Eamon O'Flaherty, drawing from wonderful source maps, watercolours and ink sketches, charts almost forensically in the latest instalment from the Royal Irish Academy's Irish Historic Towns Atlasseries edited by Anngret Simms, HB Clarke, Raymond Gillespie and Jacinta Prunty.

This multidisciplinary project, which was begun in 1986 under the direction of the International Commission for the History of Towns, has to date plotted 19 major Irish towns and cities: Dublin (in two parts), Belfast (in two parts), Derry, Kildare, Carrickfergus, Bandon, Kells, Mullingar, Athlone, Maynooth, Downpatrick, Bray, Kilkenny, Fethard, Trim, Dundalk, Armagh and Tuam. Each fascicle consists of a major topographical essay accompanied by a range of maps, period watercolours, photographs and other material chronicling the evolution of the profiled town. The Limerick fascicle is unique in its impressive spread of early maps, while O’Flaherty’s insightful growth map, which plots in colour the development of the city throughout the centuries from its Viking origins to 1900, is an historical map – projected, as are all the many reconstruction maps produced for the atlas series, on to an Ordnance Survey format.

Viking settlement in Ireland always had to contend with attack from Gaelic lordships, and the initial settlement at Limerick on the west bank of the Shannon was no exception. Yet it was re-established under Tomar Mac Elgi, this time on King’s Island, in the early 10th century. The Limerick settlement facilitated trade between Ireland and Norway. According to O’Flaherty, that there are no significant archaeological finds relating to Viking Limerick, because “few excavations have been carried out on the original site of the settlement centring on Merchants Quay, Bridge Street and St Mary’s Cathedral”. Central among the compelling features in Limerick is St Mary’s Cathedral, which has survived through the centuries and is a passive witness of sorts, as are King John’s Castle, with its various sieges, and Thomond Bridge. Included in the fascicle is a reproduction of an ink and watercolour view of Thomond Bridge c.1820 by Samuel Frederick Brocas, from the National Library collection.

The Anglo-Normans arrived in 1175, only to leave the following year. Their return in 1194 after the death of Domnall Mór Ua Brian, the king of Limerick who had thwarted Anglo-Norman attempts to take control, heralded immense change. From that time the newcomers shaped the town in a legal as well as physical sense. The land was divided into burgage plots fronting the main streets and would effectively erase the existing Hiberno-Norse plot pattern – although, as he adds, “no archaeological evidence has emerged”.

LIMERICK CONSISTS OFthree towns; the Viking which became absorbed by Englishtown, the 15th-century Irishtown and the Georgian town, Newtown Pery, which stands to the south of the medieval settlement. By 1210 Limerick had become an important platform for Anglo-Norman expansion into Connacht. King John's Castle and Thomond Bridge are interconnected symbols of that expansion.

Ecclesiastical influence was also extending at that time. Domnall Mór had either built or rebuilt St Mary’s Cathedral in about 1181 and the central core of the late 12th century building remains intact. An earlier structure may have occupied the site. Interestingly, three of the main parish churches – the cathedral, St Nicholas’s and St Munchin’s – are in Englishtown. A Prospect of Limerick, dated 1693, suggests the architectural and, presumably, the economic contrasts between the Irishtown and the Englishtown at that time. A glance at page 3 of the text reiterates the greater concentration of major buildings in Englishtown during the medieval period. At the northwestern end of the town stood the Bishop’s palace and its enclosure formed part of the town’s defensive walls.

Fortification and building projects initiated by the Anglo-Normans continued into the 14th century. The English government invariably expressed concern about the condition of Thomond Bridge and, of course, the castle, which had been seized briefly by the earl of Desmond in 1331. Limerick was increasingly regarded as an outpost by the English and was left to its own resources. This economic crisis was further affected by the spread of the Black Death from 1349 onwards. However, there must have been an improvement in civic resources by the 15th century, as St Mary’s Cathedral was extended, and the work was decorative, not merely restorative. This would suggest the emergence of wealthy merchant classes capable of financing a grand gesture. “The Arthur family patronised the rebuilding of much of the urban fabric in the 1420s” writes O’Flaherty, “ . . . the Arthur, ‘Sexten’ and St George chapels also date from this period and the surviving late fifteenth-century carved oak misericords give an impression of considerable artistic as well as economic success.”

Not only does present-day Limerick possess an extraordinary range of Georgian buildings comparable to those surviving in Dublin, it claims many churches. Central to Limerick’s importance from earliest times has been its strategic position on the Shannon, and this relevance would be later reiterated by the construction in the 1950s of what would become an international airport. By the early 16th century, Limerick was the third city in Ireland, praised for its location and splendid buildings.

An account dated 1536 describes it as “a wondrous proper city and strong and standeth environed with the river of Shenon and it may be called little London for the situation and plenty, but the castle hath need of reparation”. Almost 40 years later, in 1574, the first Irish Jesuit, David Wolfe, a Limerick man, would stress the strength and beauty of Limerick and note that the walls of Irishtown were superior to those of Englishtown, as they would have been of more recent construction.

LIMERICK EXPERIENCEDchanges caused by the Reformation and the dissolution of the monasteries. The mysterious Edmund Sexten, who was of Gaelic Irish origins arrived in Henry VIII's court, and was recruited by the king's adviser, Thomas Cromwell, to act as the king's man in Limerick. Sexten was paid with two monasteries. His rise caused serious tension among the established Limerick civic elite. But little would quell the turmoil of siege warfare exposing the defensive weaknesses of King John's Castle, which failed in 1642 to withstand attack from Limerick's citizens who were choosing the Catholic side in the developing civil war.

In 1651 Oliver Cromwell’s son-in-law Henry Ireton besieged Limerick. All the while, fortification was being improved. Yet the sieges of the 1690s left a legacy of destruction and stagnation best remembered for the vigorous defence of the city sustained over two years by Patrick Sarsfield. Limerick’s population was growing faster than most of its rival towns, “including Galway, Cork and Kilkenny”. Its seaborne trade, however, was in decline. Many public buildings were rebuilt in the classical style between 1690 and 1750, and most were located in an emerging administrative sector. From the 1730s onwards, the Catholic middle class began to assert itself and many Catholic churches and friaries were built during this period. Brick began to challenge stone as a building medium.

By the 1750s, Irishtown was densely populated. Late in the 18th century the ancestors of what would become Kate O’Brien’s confident Catholic merchant classes had begun to arrive and play a part in the new Limerick. Also noted is Limerick’s importance as a garrison town to which writers such as Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon were once posted.

For O’Flaherty, an authority on Edmund Burke, the topographical methodology required for such an atlas presented challenges: “It opened my eyes to the importance of the spatial perspective. I want to pursue this and provide a cultural and political dimension to urban history, and perhaps arrive at Braudel’s idea of total history.”

As with previous fascicles, this study offers an extraordinary amount of information in an accessible form. Not only does the series profile Irish heritage, it provides the primary source material for the understanding of Irish urban history. This is scholarship at its most innovative. It is also consistent with the objectives of the Royal Irish Academy, founded in 1785 by James Caulfield, an 18th century visionary, as practical as he was idealistic, who was conscious of the need to both preserve Irish heritage and support pure research as the academy has continued to do.

Irish Historic Towns Atlas No 21: Limerickby Eamon O'Flaherty, is published by the Royal Irish Academy, €35