Quaker meeting house behind Cecil Street is a hidden Georgian gem

The former Quaker Meeting House in Limerick is hidden behind other buildings in Cecil Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Patrick Comerford

After my visit last weekend to the house in the Plaka in Athens that was once home to Sir Richard Church, the Irish-born Greek general who was born into a Cork Quaker family, I decided to look for the former Quaker Meeting House off Cecil Street when I was in Limerick earlier this week for a diocesan meeting.

The former meeting house, which was built off Cecil Street at the beginning over 200 years ago, is normally accessible by a laneway under an interesting Art Deco rendered screen wall. But this laneway was closed on Tuesday afternoon [22 August 2017], and so I found the Meeting House by walking under an arch in Cecil Street at the other end a terrace of four single-bay houses and that leads in a locked car park that was once the site of ‘Hartigans Horse Repository.’

The Society of Friends was formed in 1646 through the peaching of George Fox and the first Quaker meeting in Ireland was held in Lurgan in 1654. The Quakers or Religious Society of Friends came to Limerick City in the 17th century, with the preaching and mission work of Francis Howgill, Edward Burroughs, Edward Tickleman and Edward Cook. They converted John Love, Richard Pearce and John Phelps, and Quaker meetings were first held in private homes, including the home of Thomas Holmes and the home of Richard Pearce. Richard Pearce in Bow Lane (now Augustine Place), near Saint Mary’s Cathedral, in 1655.

By 1656, it was estimated there were about 70 Quakers in Limerick. That year, Henry Ingoldsby the Puritan Cromwellian governor of Limerick, forbade people from interacting with Quakers on penalty of being turned out of the city. Many Quakers were driven from their homes and imprisoned for their beliefs.

Life became marginally more tolerable for Quakers after the restoration in 1660. When George Fox visited Limerick in 1667, he was a guest of Richard Pearce in Bow Lane. The first Quaker meeting house in Limerick was built in Creagh Lane two years latger in 1671. By 1687, three Quakers, James Craven, William Craven and Samuel Tavenor, were members of Limerick Corporation. Thomas Storey, the Quaker preacher, was a brother of George Storey, the Dean of Saint Mary’s Cathedral.

The meeting house on Creagh Lane was replaced in 1735 by a second, larger meeting house. The later, third meeting house off Cecil Street was built in 1806-1807 on a plot of land owned by John Meade Thomas.

It was built of rubble stone as a detached six-bay, two-storey rubble building. Inside, there was a simple double-height meeting room with a gallery, although I do not know to what degree these have survived. It was 54 feet in breadth by 92 feet in length. In 1832, a Friends’ burial ground was set aside near Peter’s Cell.

Meanwhile, in the late 18th century, a leading Quaker merchant, Joseph Massy Harvey, gave his name to Harvey’s Quay. In 1820, Isaac Unthank was the co-founder with Henry Maunsell of the Limerick Savings Bank, which started from a small room in Cecil Street.

The three Quaker Alexander brothers who ran a thriving corn business were prominent in famine relief as well as the Limerick Savings Bank, Barrington’s Hospital, the campaign for the abolition of slavery and other reforms.

Among the members of the Bennis family who were Quakers was George Geary Bennis, whose gifts made Limerick one of the first cities to have a free library. He gave up his tea and coffee shop business opposite the former Cruise’s Hotel in 1822 to carve out a new career in Paris as the editor of Galignani, one of the leading newspapers of the day. In 1848, he saved the life of King Louis Philippe in a street fracas in Paris, for which he was made a chevalier.

The arch on Cecil Street remains a reminder of Hartigans Horse Repository (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

The arch on Cecil Street that provided me with limited access to a view of the former meeting house still bears the name of Hartigans Horse Repository.

This single-bay arched cement rendered portal was built ca 1920, leading into a complex of buildings at the rear of Cecil Street. This is a segmental-arched opening with lettering in relief that proclaims: ‘Hartigans Horse Repository, Wm B Fitt & Co MIAA Auctioneers.’

In the yard that is now a gated car park, horses were stabled during the day while their owners went about their business. It also served as regular stabling for the horses of city dwellers who did not have their own groom. It is an aesthetic curiosity on the city streetscape and a reminder of days before the car took over the streets.

The former meeting house is hidden from Cecil Street by a terrace of four slender, single-bay, three-storey over basement houses, including the pharmacy at No 37 next to the former laneway that once led to the meeting house.

These houses were built ca 1820, and No 37 has an attractive three-sided canted oriel shop window on the ground floor. All four buildings have Wyatt windows. Behind these terraced houses there is a rubble stone wall to the lane at the former Quaker Meeting House.

By 1953, there were only nine members of the meeting living in Limerick, and the meeting house off Cecil Street was sold to the Irish Red Cross the following year. But the Society of Friends once again has its own meeting house in Limerick city, beside the Quaker burial ground at Southville Gardens in Ballinacurra.

Meanwhile, the former Quaker Meeting House in Cecil Street has been transformed into the Gaff, a resource for emerging and community artists, working with communities in Moyross, Saint Mary’s, Garryowen and Weston, and fostering the development of new performance work.

The building remains one of Limerick’s forgotten Georgian gems.

The former meeting house is hidden from Cecil Street by a terrace of slender houses (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

How Arthurs Quay moved from Georgian houses to slums before becoming a shopping centre

Arthurs Quay Shopping Centre … on the site of once elegant Georgian houses that became slums (Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Patrick Comerford

Arthurs Quay is a bright shopping centre in the heart of Limerick. I was there earlier this week [22 August 2017] to visit a book shop and to have a coffee. But I was interested too to read its history and to realise that this shopping centre stands on the site of a once elegant collection of terraced Georgian houses that became one of the worst slums in Limerick.

Arthurs Quay shopping centre takes its name from the Arthur family, who first came to Ireland in the 1170s. Thomas Arthur was granted an estate in Emly, Co Limerick, by Henry II in 1178.

By the 13th century, the Arthur family had settled in Limerick city, and they became a prominent mediaeval merchant family. Many family members became mayors and reeves (judges) in the city. Between 1365 and 1635, members of the Arthur family were Mayor of Limerick on 58 occasions.

Nicholas Arthur, who born in Limerick in 1405, was Mayor of Limerick no less than seven times. While sailing to England in 1428, Nicholas was captured by Breton pirates who plundered him of all his property and sold off his ship in St Malo. He was held captive for two years on Mont Saint-Michel, and was released only when a ransom demand was paid. He died in 1465 and was buried in the ancestral tomb in Saint Mary's Cathedral, Limerick.

Thomas Arthur was Bishop of Limerick in 1468-1486. He had five brothers, four of whom were Mayor of Limerick while the fifth was the City Bailiff.

Bishop Richard Arthur (1623-1646) gives his name to the Arthur Crucifix and the Arthur Chalice which are on display in the Hunt Museum, near Arthurs Quay.

An exiled member of the family, Robert Arthur, was born in Paris and was caught up in the events of French Revolution as a close friend of Robespierre. He was executed by the guillotine in 1794.

By the mid-18th century, the Arthur family were prosperous Catholic merchants in Limerick. Patrick Arthur, and his son Francis Arthur, ran their businesses from nearby Denmark Street.

When the old mediaeval city walls were pulled down in the 1760s, work began on expanding and building Georgian Limerick, and the Arthur family played an important role in the early development of the new town.

Patrick Arthur built Arthur’s Quay in 1773 to provide harbour facilities for his timber ships. His son and business partner, Francis Arthur, became involved in property development and financed the building of triangular block of Georgian terraced houses on the site now occupied by the Arthurs Quay Shopping Centre.

Whether intentional or not, this triangular block was in the shape of the letter A for Arthur, so that the Arthur family could be said to have left a permanent mark on the shape of Limerick’s streetscape.

The housing development was completed by 1791, and the houses were rented out or let, with the terraces becoming the homes of many comfortable merchant, professional and middle class families.

The Arthur family gave their name to a number of streets in the area, including Francis Street, Patrick Street, Ellen Street and Arthur’s Quay.

However, with the development of Georgian Limerick by the Pery family in the late 18th and the early 19th century, Arthurs Quay quickly became an unfashionable address.

Further damage was done to the area one evening 180 years ago, 3 January 1837, when a store of gunpowder exploded at Richardson’s gun shop at No 1 George’s Street, killing 15 people, injuring many others and damaging the houses in the area. The site of gun-shop is now a corner on O’Connell Street, opposite the main entrance to the present shopping centre.

By the middle of the 19th century it was unfashionable to live in the houses on Arthurs Quay. According to Limerick historian Maurice Lenihan, by 1866 the houses on the quay were occupied by petty dealers and turf vendors.

By the end of Queen Victoria's reign, the terrace houses had fallen so badly into disrepair that they had become tenement slums.

Michael Comerford (1870-1907), a Limerick carpenter, his wife Mary Ann (O’Dea), and their children lived at various addresses in Limerick that included 18 Arthur’s Quay (1903-1904). Michael Comerford died in 1907 at the age of 36, and his widow Mary was living at 11 Arthur’s Quay on the census night in 1911. They seem to have had 13 children, although the 1911 census said they were the parents of 12 children, six of whom were still alive.

The high level of infant mortality in a family like this shows the abject poverty and frightening living conditions in a place like Arthur’s Quay little more than a century ago.

In Angela’s Ashes, the Limerick writer Frank McCourt recalls the night he spent in a tenement in Arthur’s Quay in the 1930s. Before entering the squalid tenements, he was warned by a friend to:

Mind yourself because some of the steps are missing and there is shit on the ones that are still there. He says that’s because there’s only one privy and it’s in the backyard and children can’t go down the stairs in time to put their little arses on the bowl.

In the 1950s, many of the houses were crumbling away and eventually had to be demolished.

In the early 1970s the harbour area in front of Arthurs Quay was filled in by Limerick Corporation to form a car park. This area is now more suitably occupied by a public park, and a café and arts centre, as well as serving as a stop for the buses I get between Limerick and Dublin on an almost weekly basis.

The triangular site once occupied by the terraced houses built by Francis Arthur was developed as the Arthurs Quay Shopping Centre that stands today. The concept is mainly credited to Limerick’s civil engineer, Michael Tiernan, and the centre was built by John Sisk & Son, who began work in May 1988.

It was the single biggest building project for urban development outside Dublin that had Government support. The project was completed in October 1989, and changed the face of Limerick’s city centre, bringing prosperity to an area that had been struggling with dereliction.

The new development included a 30,000 sq ft supermarket, 26 shop units, 15,000 sq ft of office space, a block of ten apartments and 600 car-parking spaces in a multi-storey car park. At the same time, a sprawling car park was transformed into a civic park.

All that is left of the original Georgian development are a few terraced buildings on Patrick Street near the main entrance to the Shopping Centre.

In her book, The Building of Limerick, Judith Hill says ‘It was at Arthurs Quay that the city first came back to life. Further developments in the 1990s included Cruise’s Street, Cornmarket Square, the redevelopment of much of Denmark Street, Ellen Street, Michael Street and Bank Place, together with Charlotte Quay.

It seems the ‘grocer’s apostrophe’ appears and disappears from the name of Arthurs Quay, depending on the whim of authors. But the Arthur name continues to be synonymous with progress in the city 600 or 700 years since the Arthur family first made an impact on the civic, political and mercantile life of Limerick.

The River Shannon seen at Arthur’s Quay (Patrick Comerford, 2017; click on image for full-screen view)