Thomondgate area Limerick

[matthewmacnamara]

The Thomondgate area of Limerick had a particular relationship with South East Clare.
During the Famine large numbers of hungry Clare people flocked into the area. Some settled
there. Until 1950s urban resettlement, Clare family names were widespread there.
The lower end of the area near the Shannon was a place of great poverty.
At the 1852 Clare election Delmege tenants were assembled at a house in
Thomondgate, before going to vote in Sixmilebridge. For most Clare people the way into Limerick
was via Thomondgate.

[Sduddy]

Hi Matthew

Thank you for that very interesting piece. Is there more about that assembling of the Delmege tenants?

This link to “Poverty Before the Famine, County Clare 1835”: https://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/cocla ... _index.htm, gives a further link to the “Parishes of Tomfinlow, Kilnasullagh, Kilmaleary and Drumline”: https://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/cocla ... finloe.htm – all parishes in the South-East part of Clare that you speak of. It gives us an idea of the conditions people lived in at the time. I was surprised to see how many labourers and poor people were invited to attend the examination, as it was called, and they even got to speak. For instance, Mr. Moloney, the “decayed shoemaker”, gets to say a bit about female servants who have children out of wedlock, and who continue to get their wages until the baby is weaned. And Mr. Carroll, a labourer, gets to speak about old age.
In the evidence given on the subject of Widows, we hear that

These poor women are no doubt often driven to beggary ; but the residents of the parish generally seek relief from their friends, without becoming professed mendicants ; others, without endeavouring to bear up against their poverty, quit the place at once, and go beg elsewhere. The Rev. Mr. Coffey observed, that it would be hard to say whether any poor widows had turned prostitutes through destitution ; but there are some instances where girls who have had illegitimate children have left the parish, and gone to neighbouring parishes, where they are known to be passing themselves off as widows with orphans ; some of those who give themselves out as widows in Newmarket, and have but doubtful characters, may be under the same circumstances. The children of these women are amongst the worst behaved and turbulent that can be found.

So it is not surprising to hear that people from that area flocked to Limerick city during the Great Famine. People were travelling in hope - or desperation, more likely. It is interesting to hear that there was part of the city at Thomond Gate, which was populated by Clare people, mainly, and that their descendants were there right up to the 1950s.

Sheila

[smcarberry]

I have no choice but to be interested in Thomondgate, particularly when the year 1852 is mentioned. Until NLI's filmed RC baptismal registers came online, I had to accept vague references to my 2x greatgrandfather Patrick Carberry's first children's births in Ireland (before he with wife Catherine and two toddlers arrived in Montreal QUE, Canada). Their first child Mary's baptism was found in St. Munchin's Parish register (if I am viewing RC parish boundaries correctly, St. Munchin's spans both sides of the Shannon River). However, their second child Catherine's baptism was found in St. Michael's Parish register, which made sense in terms of Patrick's plan to emigrate (St. Michael's includes the location of the Customs House). Patrick's focus was on Canada even before he married Catherine in Co. Clare's O'Callaghan's Mills Parish in 1850. With her family's 1849 eviction from that parish's Clashduff townland (her father had died that year), she too was ready to move on.

For others who may want to look closer at the Thomandgate area, here are some links -- click through on specific spots on the map to see more information and closer views of geopolitical places:

https://www.johngrenham.com/browse/coun ... .php#maps/

https://www.johngrenham.com/browse/coun ... y=Limerick

Although I don't know this blog author, Patrick Comerford has provided a brief, easy to read description of Thomondgate's historic spots:
https://www.patrickcomerford.com/2017/1 ... dgate.html

If you Google for a map showing 8 Thomandgate Street, Limerick city, you will see that is just across the Shannon River from Limerick's ancient King John's Castle, a structure existing to present time and (as I understand it) open for tourism today. Thomondgate Bridge, which leads to the castle, is on High Road, which is known as Ennis Road when it heads beyond the city boundary, and also numbered as the highway route R445.

Sharon C.

[matthewmacnamara]

Dear Sharon,
Thanks for following up my post. The Catholic parish of Saint Munchin [where I was born and bred]
was all on the Clare side of the Shannon. It stretched out west to beyond Caherdavin. I have some other
details on the Thomondgate connection with Clare, that I must now extract from a personal archive.
The rural part of the parish was until recently in county Limerick, as opposed to being in the up to then separate city.
This was an anomaly as it had no land interface with the rest of county Limerick across the Shannon..
At the Famine period more than one observer remarked on the extreme poverty of part
of the parish.

Matthew Mac Namara

[matthewmacnamara]

Here are two items relating to the 1852 general election meeting disorder at Sixmilebridge
that culminated in the shooting dead of six people by the military

# electors were fetched from a house in Thomondgate by Mr Delmege and a detachment of military, and conveyed to the hustings at Sixmilebridge. [July 24, press source unconfirmed]

# the 'rioters' who were charged, and whose names and places of residence are as follows: - Thomas RIEDY, Limerick; Patt M'INERNEY, Crossroads; James HALLORAN, Jas. QUINLIVAN, and Patt KINEVANE, of Thomondgate, then proceeded to the grand jury-room. [Crossroads is in Thomondgate, note the Clare surnames] from the Limerick Reporter, 2 September