Qualla: History of Limerick

History of Limerick: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Roland Czaczyk (FreeBird 19:17, 23 December 2006 (UTC)), Public domain. Ptolemy drew a map of Ireland in 150 AD and marked a place called Regia on what is now King's Island in the middle of the Shannon. He had been told something by somebody about a settlement at the river's tidal limit, a thousand years before the Vikings showed up. By 561 a settlement existed there with a name - Luimneach, possibly meaning 'a bare or barren spot of land,' or 'a bare marsh,' or maybe 'a spot made bare by feeding horses,' depending on which sixth-century etymologist you trust. None of the Limerick before 812 AD survived in writing because the Vikings, when they arrived, were thorough about burning records. But the city the Vikings built in 922 is, with extraordinary continuity, the city that still exists. Eleven hundred years later, in 2014, it became Ireland's inaugural National City of Culture. In between, it survived sieges, treaties, plagues, famines, civil wars and the global financial crash. The river goes on. So does the city.

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Image: Roland Czaczyk (FreeBird 19:17, 23 December 2006 (UTC)) | Public domain

History of Limerick: Viking Foundation

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MonikaKub, CC BY-SA 4.0. Norsemen sailed up the Shannon in 812, pillaged the existing settlement and burned the monastery at Mungret. By 922 they had returned permanently. A Viking jarl named Thórir Helgason - Tomrair mac Ailchi in Irish records - was using the Limerick fleet to raid up the river as far ...

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Image: MonikaKub | CC BY-SA 4.0

History of Limerick: Three Sieges

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Fondo Antiguo de la Biblioteca de la Universidad de Sevilla from Sevilla, España, CC BY 2.0. In 1642 Irish Confederate forces under Garret Barry captured King John's Castle from its small English garrison. In 1651, after the Battle of Worcester, Cromwell's son-in-law Henry Ireton arrived with the New Model Army and laid siege to Limerick for twelve brutal months. Famine ...

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Image: Fondo Antiguo de la Biblioteca de la Universidad de Sevilla from Sevilla, España | CC BY 2.0

History of Limerick: Georgian Prosperity, Famine, Boycott

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Original uploader was Poxyshamrock at en.wikipedia, Public domain. The eighteenth century brought, paradoxically, prosperity. Penal Laws restricted Catholic life, but Limerick's role as Ireland's main western port for transatlantic trade made the Protestant gentry and Catholic merchant class both rich. The town doubled, then doubled again. In 17...

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Image: Original uploader was Poxyshamrock at en.wikipedia | Public domain

History of Limerick: Strike, Civil War, Emergency

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Herman Moll, Public domain. April 1919 saw the Limerick Soviet - a fortnight-long general strike against British military occupation, in which the Limerick Trades Council printed its own money and controlled food prices for the duration. Two years later, on 6 March 1921, three Black and Tans assassinated Ma...

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Image: Herman Moll | Public domain

History of Limerick: Recent Decades

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JohnArmagh, Public domain. Post-war Limerick was characterised by emigration and unemployment. Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes - the Pulitzer-winning memoir of a 1930s and 40s Limerick childhood - documented the poverty that drove so many of his generation abroad. Richard Harris, the actor, and Terry Wogan,...

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Image: JohnArmagh | Public domain