Merchants Quay — Limerick City

The potato market stands at the junction of Quay Lane [Bridge Street] and Merchant's Quay which was an important harbour or port in medieval Limerick. This merchant's harbour or port protected by a quay wall was described by Leask (1941, 101) as following; 'Where the Potato Market now is there was one of the most interesting features of ancient Limerick — the ship dock or port — enclosed by pier-like arms of the walls terminating in towers. The southern pier or wall, nearly 400 feet [122m] long, started from a tower seemingly three-sided, at the foot of the "Rue du Quay" of the French map: the modern Bridge Street, and formed the south boundary of the port. In 1500, say Fitzgerald and McGregor, "a wall and vault were built on the south side of the Quay. This vault had its entrance by a flight of steps at the end of Quay Lane, and formed a covered way to a six-gun battery at the Pierhead near the flood-gate. This is the south wall and tower shown (the former by a double line) on the French map [Lenihan 1866, 258], which also shows the entrance steps minutely. This south wall of the Quay was repaired in 1640-41, when Wm. Comyn was Mayor, and bore a long inscription to that effect which is given in Ferrar's History, 1st edition, 1767. The tower fell in 1693, the collision of the falling stones detonating the 250 barrels of gunpowder in store there, with most destructive effects: fatal casualties and much injury to persons and property houses were wrecked, many windows broken and roofs stripped. The battery at the pier-head seems to have been a successor to the tower. The entrance to the port was bounded, on the north side also, by a wall-pier about 100 feet [30m] in length and the same distance from the south wall. It also terminated in a tower. Within the entrance lay the dock itself, an irregular piece of water surrounded by quays and projecting jetties and backed by the quay. The view in Pacata Hibernia shows a sort of half-moon quay, but the French map and that of 1590 [TCD, MS 1209/57] are more precise and detailed and probably more accurate. The piers and terminal towers—which must have been most interesting and picturesque objects—have quite gone and so also has the whole of the river wall of the town from the dock northwards to the nearest tower of King John's Castle [LI005-017014-]. Its trace passes across the County Court House diagonally at the river end of the building, and in the same way over the yards west of the City Court House'. Compiled by: Caimin O'Brien Date of upload: 19 November 2019