Ireland Travel Search: Munster: County Kerry Tourism Information Directory for Visitors to Ireland


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Ireland > Munster > County Kerry

County Limerick is best described as a quiet farming community and is best know for the hundreds of ruined castles in the area along with its famous name, one of Ireland's and the world's best-known names - but it did NOT as is widely believed, give its name to the five-line style of comic verse known as the limerick.

The limerick was popularised by 19th century English humorist and painter Edward Lear, who never visited County Limerick.

Of great interest in the area also is Lough Gur and its fascinating wealth of prehistoric ruins, as well as the later - and just as impressive Norman castles and monasteries that still stand amongst the green patchwork of fields and lovely old farmhouses.

The major city is Limerick, which was the epicentre of the economic revival policies of the 1950s, and it played a major part in the birth in later decades of the much vaunted Irish 'Celtic Tiger' economy.

Click on the headings to find out more:

County Limerick is full of market towns like Newcastle West, Kilmllock, Castleconnell and Kilfinane - but Limerick City is its biggest centre. The city's former poverty is evoked vividly in Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt's great book with his account of his impoverished upbringing in a squalid Limerick hovel in the 1930s and 1940s. The book won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize and shot to the top of the New York Times best-seller list. The book was also made into a superb movie starring Emily Watson and Robert Carlyle.

The Irish Government agency in charge of developing Limerick and the West of Ireland, Shannon Development, hopes the popularity of Angela's Ashes will work to Limerick's advantage, as the novels of James Joyce have helped Dublin. The book certainly did not paint Limerick in those days (or the English!) in a glowing light. "People everywhere brag about the woes of their early years but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty, the shiftless loquacious alcoholic father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying schoolmasters; the English and the terrible things they did to us for eight hundred long years."
- Frank McCourt

However, Limerick today with its fast growing population of around 150 thousand people has changed dramatically since the since the dark days of the Depression and Angela's Ashes. Those who left it in those grim times hardly recognise the modern version. Limerick today even though still a little drab, now boasts restaurants, cafes, arts centres, museums libraries and is something of a cultural icon in Ireland, housing the famous Hunt collection of fabulous art treasures, which is worth the journey alone to this region. The city also has a modern, well respected university, and overall is now regarded as having become something of an information technology hotspot. McCourt, a New Yorker for the past 50 years, was recently writer in residence at Limerick University. Limerick also is a repository of wonderful Georgian houses that survived in dilapidated state for much of this century, but are now being restored now that there's money to restore them. (The city fathers were too smart to just knock them down)

King John's Castle, Limerick City, (ANOTHER King Johns Castle - he certainly got around!) has five drum towers and massive walls, and was supposedly built/commissioned by England's King John in 1200AD, not long after the Normans invaded. King John was a very bad king - so bad in fact that no English monarch has been named John since. John is said to have lost England's Crown Jewels by rowing out into The Wash (an English estuary) and accidentally capsizing his rowboat while admiring his jewels. He certainly lost most of England's lands in France and was forced by rebellious nobles to sign the Magna Carta, granting them respite from his tyrannical reign. Two ancient catapults stand in the courtyard of King John's Castle - they were used to fire flaming debris (and occasionally rotting animals) at enemies. Given half a chance, King John's troops would have loaded the king into one of the catapults and fired him at the enemy instead.

Adare, 10 miles (16km) southwest of Limerick, is a lovely little place full of thatched cottages. It looks more English than Irish - and for good reason. The Earls of Dunraven "restored" the village early in the 19th century, preferring an English look to that of Ireland. The area around Adare is known as the `Palatine' after the number of Lutheran refugees from Germany that were paid to settle here by the British government in the 18th century. Their descendants are still very prominent in the area.

Foynes, Limericks small seaport was the home of a large and very important Flying Boat base here in WW2 when many extremely high ranking US and English 'Top Brass' high ranking officers flew across the Atlantic to and from the US. The radio and weather rooms with their original Morse code transmitters are fascinating. However, it really shoots into the `Hall of Fame' as this is where `Irish Coffee' was invented. Yep. Right here. That in itself is another story, and goes along pretty predictable lines of freezing cold weather, Irish whiskey and American coffee. - Just a wonder it was not thought of before then! (The story is really fascinating and well worth looking up on the Internet as we don't have enough space to go into it here.) Ed.





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