Tours

The Angela's Ashes Tour

In the map of Limerick available from the Tourist Office on Arthur's Quay, the areas of the city most frequently mentioned in Frank McCourt's 'Angela's Ashes' are shaded in pink. These are the streets west of the People's Park and south of Hartstonge Street. A good way to get your bearings in Limerick is to join Michael O'Donnell's Angela's Ashes Tour which starts from the Tourist Office on Arthur's Quay on weekday afternoons at 2.30. McCourt's Pulitzer Prize-winning, and surpassingly grim, memoir of his childhood in Limerick during the 1940s has raised a few hackles in the city. A local journalist, Gerry Hannon, famously rounded on McCourt on the Late Late Show, RTE's Friday night chat show, accusing him of dishonoring his mother's reputation by describing the affair she had with a cousin. If you raise the subject of Angela's Ashes in Limerick you'll hear comments such as 'McCourt exaggerated things' or 'It wasn't as bad as all that'. Frank McCourt would probably reply that it damn well was, although it need not have been: his patriotic father's indolence and addiction to drink left his family poorer than most. And, even allowing for artistic licence, and the vagaries of memory, McCourt does give a good impression of what life was like for the Irish poor during the 1930s, 40s and 50s, the years one historian described as the 'disillusioned decades'. The subjects that recur in Angela's Ashes - emigration, religious mania, tuberculosis and censorship - were the stuff of everyday life in Ireland at the time. The book was certainly authentic enough for Michael O'Donnell, who grew up in the city at the same time as McCourt. Since 1997 O'Donnell has been conducting tours of Georgian Limerick which take in twenty of the locations mentioned in Angela's Ashes. Some places, such as Leamy's school, the Carnegie Library, Windmill Street, where the McCourts lived, and the People's Park, where the teenaged Frank dreamed of virgin martyrs in bathing suits, are much as McCourt left them. South's pub on O'Connell Avenue, where Frank's father Malachy drank the family's money, has changed little in its outside appearance, but the old drunk would hardly recognize the inside of the place today. Other haunts of Frank McCourt, Question Quigley and Quasimodo Dooley, such as Naughton's chipper, are gone for good but Michael O'Donnell's descriptions will evoke them for you in all their awfulness. For further information on the Angela's Ashes tour contact St Mary's Action Centre, 44 Nicholas Street Limerick. Tel_353 (0)61 318 106 or 327 108.

If 'Angela's Ashes' has whetted your curiosity, move on next to Sean Spellissy's The History of Limerick City.

City Tour

Limerick is a compact, walkable city. The tourist office on Arthur's Quay, where you can buy a map of the city centre, is a good point of departure. Most of the sights mentioned in this proposed itinerary are marked on the map. Leaving the tourist office, and passing along Patrick Street, you'll come to Rutland Street. The Celtic Bookshop, at No 2 Rutland Street, has the widest range of Irish-interest books and publications in the country. The Hunt Collection is housed in the restored Custom House, on the other side of the street. You'll get a fine view of the Custom House from the other side of the Shannon. Rutland Street meets Father Matthew Bridge, on the other side of which is Englishtown, the historic heart of the city. Directly ahead of you is St Mary's Cathedral, built in the Gothic style in the twelfth century. Most of the chapels at St Mary's are fifteenth-century additions, but the west doorway, the nave and parts of the transept and aisles are original. Saint Mary's is famous for its misericords, the decorated ledges projecting from the underside of the hinged seats of the medieval choir stalls. The misericords are decorated with depictions of fabulous creatures from the medieval bestiary, such as the griffin, which was believed to symbolize Christ: the griffin's leonine body represented Christ as King of the Earth; its eagle's head Christ as Lord of the Skies. Misericords (the word is derived from the Latin word for compassion) served as supports for elderly clerics who were no longer able to remain on their feet for periods during the liturgy.

After leaving St Mary's, walk up Nicholas Street and take a left onto Castle Lane, a newly-created street lined with recreated period buildings, which links Nicholas Street, one of Limerick's oldest thoroughfares, with the Shannon quays. The buildings on Castle Lane are clad with bricks or stone salvaged from demolished edifices in other parts of the city. The Limerick Museum is in a reproduction eighteenth-century granary building. Anyone intending to visit Lough Gur should drop into the museum, which houses artefact's, such as pottery vessels, querns and arrowheads excavated at the Lough. Stroll down Castle Lane past the Dutch gable houses to the lawn in front of the Castle Tavern, for a fine view downriver towards the modern city centre.

Directly opposite the museum is King John's Castle, the five-sided fortress which looms over Limerick. The walk along the battlements, from corner tower to corner tower, offers exhilarating views of the city and surrounding countryside. Underneath the visitor's centre you can inspect the remains of pre-Norman dwellings. The original Viking settlement was at the foot of the east curtain wall of the castle. Thomond Bridge spans James Joyce's 'dark, mutinous Shannon waves'. Turn left at the other end of the bridge, walk along Clancy's Strand for a bit, and you'll come to the Treaty Stone, a roughly-hewn block of stone, on which Patrick Sarsfield is said to rested the Treaty document as he signed it.

From Clancy's Quay you get a fine general view of medieval Limerick, water-girt and secure. This is also a good spot from which to admire the three-bay pilaster frontispiece of the Custom House, built in 1765 in the Palladian style, and fronting on to the river. Keeping the Shannon to your left continue along Clancy's Quay and cross the river by the Sarsfield Bridge, built between 1824 and 1835 and modeled on the Pont Neuilly on the Seine. Turn right up O'Connell street, at its intersection with Sarsfield Street, carry on for a block or so, and you'll come to the Augustinian Church. Set into the wall at the entrance to the church is a delicately carved piece of stone, said to be part of the lintel from the chapel the Augustinian order founded in Fish Street in 1633, after the suppression of their monastery in Adare.

O'Connell Street, the city's main artery, bisects Newtown Pery, an area of Georgian buildings mainly laid out in a gridiron pattern. O'Connell Street ends curving out on either side to form a beautiful and unique double crescent. At its centre there stands a monument to Daniel O'Connell, who secured emancipation for Irish Catholics in 1829. From the Crescent you can look straight down O'Connell Street into the heart of the city. Turn left up Barrington street and left again onto Pery Square, a row of six Georgian buildings facing the People's Park. Pery Square, built in 1839, represents Georgian architecture at its most confident. Number 2 has been restored and opened to the public. During the renovations builders discovered the original plasterwork, decorations, and painted marbling on the walls. A visit will give you an insight into life in a well-to-do Victorian household. The family quartered its servants downstairs and installed its housekeeper in a room within sight of the pantry, where she could keep watch for hungry intruders. The children played well out of earshot of their parents in rooms at the very top of the house.

Only six houses were built; however, had all gone according to plan, Pery Square would have had 49 buildings and would have enclosed the beautifully-maintained People's Park directly opposite. Surmounting the column in the centre of the park is a statue of Thomas Spring Rice, who represented Limerick in parliament between 1820 and 1832 and served as Chancellor of the Exchequer between 1835 and 1839. Spring Rice was a good egg, popular among the common people because of his campaigns against corruption in high places. The Art Gallery by the main entrance to the park contains some excellent works by Jack Yeats and Sean Keating, two of the leading Irish artists of the century, and hosts touring exhibitions.

Walk along Pery Street to Baker Place where the handsome Tait Clock was erected in honour of Sir Peter Tait, a Scotsman, who established the Limerick Clothing Factory in 1852. Tait later served three terms as mayor of the city. From Baker Place go along Davis Street to Parnell Street, where you can load up on tripe, a local specialty, in the butchers' shops. Turn off Parnell Street and walk along Upper Gerald Griffin street and Brennan's Row to the restored 18th century buildings on John's Square. The solid stone-built houses, with their Georgian doorways and fanlights, were once town houses for the local gentry. The spire of St. John's Cathedral directly ahead is said to be the highest in Ireland. Leaving John's Square and going along New Street, keeping the hospital to your right, you'll come to one of the remaining stretches of the battered city walls. The route back to Arthur's Quay takes you along Brennan's Row, right along Sean Heuston Place to the old milk market, now restored as a series of craft shops and restaurants. Robert Street leads directly from the milk market to Arthur's Quay.

Lough Gur

Lough Gur, one of the most important archaeological sites in Ireland, is just off the R512 Limerick - Killmallock road, some 17 kilometres south of the city. In the late 1930s, at around the same time as John and Gertrude Hunt moved from London to Lough Gur in County Limerick, Professor Sean P O'Riordain of University College, Cork, began excavating the numerous neolithic sites around the horseshoe-shaped lake. The excavations conducted by O'Riordain, Hunt and other archaeologists over the following decades have confirmed the area around Lough Gur as one of the most significant Neolithic areas in Europe. Some of the flints, and other objects unearthed at Lough Gur are now on display at the Hunt Museum.

How you tackle Lough Gur depends on the time at your disposal. Ideally you should equip yourself with a map and spend a day wandering around the ring forts, burial chambers and stone circles. Alternatively, you can walk around the lake, taking in some of the larger sites. The most impressive of these is Grange Stone Circle, the largest in Ireland, and the first important site you see as you approach Lough Gur from Limerick. The circle measures 46 metres in internal diameter and dates from around 2000 BC. As yet no-one has been able to provide an uncontestable explanation for the building of stone circles. They may have had cultic significance, or provided means of measuring the passing of the seasons. It is beyond doubt is that neolithic people expended great effort in their construction. Grange forms a near-perfect circle composed of 113 contiguous stones - or orthostats, to use the technical term. In its centre archaeologists discovered the post - hole wherein the makers of Grange embedded a stick, to which they attached a rope, holding it as they walked in a circle, marking out the positions of the stones. The builders of Grange heaved the great stones into place, after dragging them from quarries and knocking them into shape. At the northeast of the Grange circle is a stone-lined entrance passage. Following the road for a kilometre, and taking the left-hand turn marked 'Lough Gur' you'll come to the 'Giant's Grave' a wedge-shaped gallery grave, 9 metres long, and divided into two chambers by a large slab. Taking your bearings at the rather tasteful interpretive centre, head next to Knockadoon, a large peninsula, where there is an enormous number of neolithic remains including a rectangular stone-age house, and another, circular, dwelling.

Lough Gur gave John Hunt much food for thought. The neolithic house he reconstructed there served a the prototype for a similar reconstruction at the Hunt's experimental archaeological centre at Craggaunowen in County Clare.

Bunratty Castle and Ennis

Bunratty Castle, a perfectly-restored medieval keep, is twelve kilometers north of Limerick on the N18. Castles of one sort or another have stood on this site, at the confluence of the Ogarney and Shannon rivers, since the Middle Ages. What you see today is a recreation of the sixteenth-century castle, described by the Papal Nuncio, Cardinal Rinucoiri, in 1646, 'as the most beautiful spot I have ever seen'. At the time of his visit Bunratty was the chief seat of the Earls of Thomond. Bunratty had crumbled somewhat by 1956 when Lord Gort acquired it. Encouraged and advised by John Hunt, Gort began the modern restoration. This was both meticulous and accurate, as one would have expected of any project in which Hunt had a hand. Hunt furnished the castle with Irish medieval artifacts and ecclesiastical furnishings.

The castle has four floors of varying height. Miscreants would have pondered the errors of their ways in the dungeons down in the basement. The Earl's soldiers keep watch from the vaulted first floor. Above this is the Great Hall, where the Earl and his guests roistered, and where the celebrated mock-medieval banquets take place today. A Sheela-na-Gig—a carved-stone representation of a woman baring her genitalia—has been inserted into one of the window embrasures on the first floor; in another embrasure you can see fragments of stucco, a material which also decorates the chapel of the Great Hall. The Earls of Thomond had their private apartments on the uppermost floor.

The castle, its furnishings and grounds, were bequeathed to the nation by Lord Gort, and are now managed by the Shannon Development Company, which has created a folk park, and reconstructed a nineteenth-century Irish village in the grounds. The houses are recreations of various types of dwellings found in the region in times past. The austere little cottages typical of the hard-scrabble West Clare landscape contrast with the grander houses found on the rich farmlands of West Limerick. You can catch displays of various traditional crafts, such as farriery, candle-making and weaving.

Rejoin the N18, and follow the signs for Ennis. To your left, a few kilometers before the village of Clarecastle, you'll notice that a new stretch of road curves around a small tree. Local tradition associates the tree with the fairies, or 'little people'; supernatural beings believed to inhabit the Irish countryside. Irish folklore is replete with tales of the grim fates which befell people who damaged or interfered with 'fairy-trees'. Older Clare people will talk of the spate of accidents suffered by the builders of Shannon airport, after they damaged a 'fairy-tree'. Whoever supervised the laying of the road outside Clarecastle was taking no chances, although the 'modification' added tens of thousands of pounds to the cost of the project.

Ennis, the pretty, bustling town which serves as the administrative centre for County Clare, is about five kilometers from the 'fairy-tree'. It grew around a castle built by an O'Brien chieftain in the thirteenth century. The most outstanding attraction in the town is Ennis Abbey, on the banks of the Fergus, and one of the few well-preserved examples of early Franciscan architecture in Ireland. By 1306, according to one account, its patron Turlough O'Brien, had filled the friary with 'sweet bells, crucifixes, and a good library, embroidery, veils and cowls'. The East Window, for which Turlough commissioned a blue stained-glass pane, was one of the wonders of the medieval friary. Ennis Abbey is famous for its tomb-sculpture, most notably the 15th century 'Passion' scenes which adorn the tomb of the Creagh family.

Eamon de Valera represented Ennis in parliament for 42 years, and made many an important speech in the town. The speech for which he is probably best remembered is one he didn't managed to finish. The Irish Civil War had petered out in the spring of 1923, De Valera's republicans having 'dumped' their arms, when Dev, a wanted man, rose to give a speech in Market Place in Ennis on August 15 1923. He managed a few sentences before Free State troops began firing on the crowd, wounding De Valera in the leg. After his arrest he spent a year in Dublin's Arbour Hill prison planning his political comeback. The De Valera Library and Museum, housed in a beautifully-converted Presbyterian church in Harmony Row, contains a good deal of memorabilia from the life and times of the 'long fellow', as well as archival material, and items of a more general archaeological and historical interest.

Ireland's Finest Places to Eat, Drink and Stay recommends The Cloister on Abbey Street. This stone-walled and floored pub/restaurant is built into the walls and garden of Ennis Abbey. The bar menu tends toward traditional dishes such as Irish stew and fish pie. You'll find more adventurous fare in the restaurant.