Qualla: Doon, County Limerick

Doon, County Limerick: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Irish name for this village means, depending on which theory you accept, either "fort of the stream," or "fort of the swine herder," or - in the version locals reluctantly admit - "fort of the harlot." Dun Bleisce. The annals of Inisfallen recorded it in 774. For more than a thousand years afterwards the village was known by that name, until in 2003 the Placenames Commission tried to clean it up by recommending the official translation be changed to An Dun. A sustained local campaign got the old name reinstated by 2006: An Dun was rejected on the grounds that Dun Bleisce had "an attested historical basis." The Ordnance Survey records eight ring forts in the village's hinterland. The main one is right behind the Church of Ireland church. Doon today is a quiet east Limerick village - the kind of place whose most famous moment came in October 2024 when its GAA club won the Limerick Senior Hurling Championship for the first time in its 136-year history.

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Doon, County Limerick: Eight ring forts and a saint

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Dun is the common Irish word for fort, and the area around Doon is unusually thick with them. The Ordnance Survey maps eight ring forts in the village's surrounding townlands - the visible remains of Iron Age and early medieval farmsteads, each one a circular earthwork enclosing ...

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Doon, County Limerick: Brian Boru on the door

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Castle Garde, just outside the village, is older than most of what survives in east Limerick. It was originally built by the O'Briens - the great Gaelic dynasty descended from Brian Boru, the eleventh-century high king of Ireland - and was substantially restored in the early 1800...

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Doon, County Limerick: Convent and Christian Brothers

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Doon's two great educational institutions arrived in the second half of the nineteenth century, both at the urging of one Catholic priest. Rev. Patrick Hickey, the parish priest, had a grand-niece in the Convent of Mercy at Kinsale in County Cork. In February 1865 he invited her ...

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Doon, County Limerick: The 2014 mudslide

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In July 2014 a torrential downpour broke over Doon. The hill above the village turned into a river of mud carrying tree trunks, boulders, and railway sleepers down through gardens and onto roads. People reported being trapped in cars and sheds, unable to reach their homes through...

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Doon, County Limerick: All-Ireland medals and a county title

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Doon GAA was founded in 1888, six years after the Gaelic Athletic Association itself. For more than a century the club's senior hurlers were in the upper ranks of Limerick hurling without ever winning the county championship. They reached the Limerick Senior Hurling final five ti...

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