Qualla: Coonagh, Limerick City

Coonagh, Limerick City: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ThadysLamp, CC BY-SA 4.0. When the Shannon broke its banks in October 1961 and submerged most of Coonagh in five metres of water, the children of the village had to be taken out to school in gandelow boats - the same flat-bottomed wooden craft their fathers and grandfathers used for drift-netting salmon. That was a working answer to a working problem. For most of its long history Coonagh has done what places along the great Irish river do: fish, cut reed for thatch, dig the river clay for brick, and wait for the next flood. The 2008 boundary change folded Coonagh into Limerick city; the M7 motorway and the Limerick Tunnel cut through the salt marshes south of the village; the brick holes are gone. But Thady's Lamp still warns ships of the shallows in the channel, and the badger setts are still visible just below it.

Read more: Coonagh, Limerick City on Qualla

Image: ThadysLamp | CC BY-SA 4.0

Coonagh, Limerick City: A Village in Two Counties

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Velela, Public domain. Coonagh sits in the awkward geographical seam where County Limerick presses against County Clare along the north bank of the Shannon. The village has two halves - Coonagh West, sometimes called Faha or 'the village', and Coonagh East. Until 2008 it was administratively part of Co...

Read more: Coonagh, Limerick City on Qualla

Image: Velela | Public domain

Coonagh, Limerick City: The Gandelow Trade

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ThadysLamp, CC BY-SA 4.0. The traditional working life of Coonagh ran by the river. Men fished for salmon with drift nets from gandelows - long, narrow, flat-bottomed wooden boats unique to the Shannon Estuary, light enough to be poled through shallow channels and stable enough to handle a heavy net of fi...

Read more: Coonagh, Limerick City on Qualla

Image: ThadysLamp | CC BY-SA 4.0

Coonagh, Limerick City: Holding Back the Shannon

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Adareman, CC BY-SA 4.0. The embankments that keep the river out of Coonagh are an unending project. The Down Survey of the 1650s described the land here simply as 'pasture overflowen every tide.' In 1808 the surveyor Hely Dutton called the existing embankments along the Shannon and Fergus the worst poss...

Read more: Coonagh, Limerick City on Qualla

Image: Adareman | CC BY-SA 4.0

Coonagh, Limerick City: The Riot of 1848

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MarkusMark, CC BY-SA 3.0. In June 1848, with the Great Famine ravaging Ireland, a tense local episode unfolded on the Shannon at Coonagh. The village then hosted a Royal Navy Coast Guard station whose Inspecting Commander, Captain Montagu Pasco, wrote a detailed report of an incident on 22 June. Three to ...

Read more: Coonagh, Limerick City on Qualla

Image: MarkusMark | CC BY-SA 3.0

Coonagh, Limerick City: Thady's Lamp

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MonikaKub, CC BY-SA 4.0. A handful of small landmarks define Coonagh's older landscape, the kind of detail that doesn't make tourist brochures. Thady's Lamp is an unmanned metal lamp tower on the river that warns ships of shallow water; until recently it was lit by oil lanterns, now by solar-powered elec...

Read more: Coonagh, Limerick City on Qualla

Image: MonikaKub | CC BY-SA 4.0