History of Limerick

[citation needed] William Camden wrote that the Irish had been jealous about their antiquity since the deluge and were ambitious to memorialise important events for posterity.

Antiquity's map-maker, Ptolemy, produced in 150 AD the earliest map of Ireland, showing a place called "Regia" at the same site as King's Island.

History also records an important battle involving Cormac mac Airt in 221 and a visit by St. Patrick in 434 to baptise an Eóganachta king, Carthann the Fair.

In 812 Danes sailed up the Shannon and pillaged the town, burned the monastery of Mungret but were forced to flee when the Irish attacked and killed many of their number.

[11] He and his allies were defeated by the Dál gCais, and after slaying Ivar, Brian would annex Norse Limerick and begin to make it the new capital of his kingdom.

In 1216 King John further granted the areas North (as far as a tributary of the Shannon) and South of the River to City to be known as the "Northern" and "Southern" Liberties.

Ships berthed on the Limerick quaysides ready to transport produce from one of the most fertile parts of Ireland, the Golden Vale, to the English ports.

Giving evidence to a British parliament select committee inquiring into the famine, Spaight said that: I found so great an advantage of getting rid of the pauper population upon my own property that I made every possible exertion to remove them ...

The wife of Lieb Siev and their child were injured by stones and their house damaged by an angry crowd for which the ringleaders were sentenced to hard labour for a month.

Following the arrest and death of Robert Byrne, a local republican and trade unionist, most of Limerick city and a part of the county were declared a "Special Military Area under the Defence of the Realm Act".

The Irish Times referred to this committee as a Limerick Soviet;[35] however, the high degree of involvement of the Catholic Church shows that it was in fact quite different from the recent Bolshevik uprising.

Open conflict erupted on Roches Street in April 1920 between the Royal Welch Fusiliers and the general population, involving bayonets on the one side and stones and bottles on the other.

On 5 December 1921 Éamon de Valera gave a speech (in what is now The Strand Hotel on the Ennis Road) cautioning against optimism in the peace process.

The treaty also gifted the ports of Berehaven, Cobh and Lough Swilly to the United Kingdom as UK sovereign bases, while annuities would continue to be paid to the British government in lieu of money loaned to Irish tenants under various land acts.

Three separate Irish factions rushed in to fill the vacuum: The pro-Treaty Claremen of the First-Western Division under General Michael Brennan, who was asked by the new Free-State government to occupy the city because of doubts about the loyalty of Liam Forde's Mid-Limerick Brigade.

William St. became a battle zone by 7 p.m. on 11 July 1922, when the Free State troops opened fire on the Republican garrison holding the Ordnance Barracks.

On 17 July, Eoin O'Duffy arrived in the city as part of a nationwide offensive, in command of 1,500 Free State reinforcements equipped with artillery.

The German electric company Siemens-Schuckertwerke (today Siemens AG) was awarded the 5.2 million pound contract, providing employment for 750 people.

The state set up non-agricultural industries such as Turf Development Board (Later Bord na Móna) and Aer Rianta (airports authority).

During this time, the de Valera government introduced several emergency laws to suppress the IRA and General Eoin O'Duffy's Blueshirt Anti-Fianna Fáil supporters.

The following year, the outbreak of World War II forced the introduction of the Emergency Powers Act 1939 to control communications, media, prices and imports.

An army officer named Captain McKenna described it as the day "Realisation dawned on Ireland that the country was surrounded by water, and that the sea was of vital importance to her.

The economy of the Limerick area was largely neglected in the post war period and the city and county became characterised by extremely high emigration and unemployment.

A few of the many who left became successful abroad, including the actor Richard Harris,[43] the BBC presenter Terry Wogan,[44] and the school teacher turned memoirist, Frank McCourt.

[40] Irish Times journalist Arthur Quinlan who was based at Shannon boasts at having interviewed every US president from Harry Truman to George H. W. Bush and many Soviet leaders, including Andrey Vyshinsky and Andrei Gromyko.

On 13 March 1965, Guevara suddenly arrived at the airport when his flight from Prague to Cuba developed mechanical problems, and Quinlan was on hand to interview him.

The seemingly sudden economic growth of the 1990s, termed the Celtic Tiger, making Ireland one of the richest countries in the world, had deep foundations stretching back through the 1980s and 1970s.

Industrial estates at Raheen and Plassey (Castletroy), and energetic government intervention, brought in numerous foreign firms, notably Analog Devices, Wang Laboratories and Dell Computers.

In 1996, the city had a brief moment of world attention when the Irish writer Frank McCourt published Angela's Ashes for which he won the Pulitzer Prize.

The appearance of the city has been undergoing a gradual face-lift: two new bridges over the Shannon, and a newly opened tunnel complete the orbital road; many of the older buildings have been replaced, some controversially such as the ancient Cruises Hotel (see Architecture of Limerick).