Limerick's Conservation Area

Defining the special architectural and historical interest of Limerick's conservation area

Table of Contents

1. Definition and Importance of Conservation Areas
2. Current Description of the Area
3. Important Features
4. Morphological Analysis
5. Architectural Qualities
6. Public Memorials / Historic Monuments
7. Notable Spaces in the Area
8. Building Materials, Textures and Colours
9. Loss Intrusion or Damage

1) Definition and Importance of Conservation Areas

Architectural Conservation Areas (ACA's) were introduced through the Local Government (Planning and Development) Act 1999.

ACA's are places, areas, groups of structures or townscapes, which are of special architectural, historical, archaeological, artistic, cultural, scientific, social or technical interest. They also include areas, which contribute to the appreciation of protected structures. The setting of a protected structure is often an essential part of its character.

2) Current Description of the Area

Limerick's Conservation Area is located within the Georgian Area of the city, also known as Newtown Pery. This area includes the blocks between Pery Square and Henry Street and from Barrington Street to Mallow Street.

The streets of Newtown Pery represent a unique example of 18th and 19th century planning in Ireland. Its initial division into rectangular lots was important in maintaining a sense of unity in the development. This architectural unity was achieved despite the fact that the Newtown is not the work of a single architect or landlord. Blocks were leased and built upon by individuals over a long period of time and the area did not assume its final shape until the 1820s and 1830s, when the last streets, such as Hartstonge Street, Catherine Place and The Crescent, were built. Pery Square, which was never fully realised, was laid out in the 1830s, by which time the era of Georgian building which created the Newtown was coming to an end.

The streets leading to The Crescent and Pery Square conform to the prevailing canons of eighteenth century town planning, defining the streetscape by their adherence to fixed proportions and ordered harmonious symmetry. They combine to form an architectural heritage of great urbanity and considerable beauty.

The irregularity emerged in relation to the treatment of heights, facades, type of buildings combined with the rigid street pattern gives Georgian Limerick a distinct sense of place.

Georgian terraced townhouses were built by developers whose main interest was to make a good profit. It is understandable that the builder wanted to construct as many houses as possible on a street to maximise his profit and reduce expenditure on non-profitable road making. At the same time he had to consider the demands of the buyers who wanted a dignified and comfortable house. This explains the tall, narrow-fronted design of terraced houses as an ideal architectural style, which combines both high density development with ample living space for the occupants, with rooms for the servants, too.

The eighteenth century house was designed to make maximum use of a small piece of land and the design was simple, functional, solid and enduring, the repetitive architectural features of the Georgian terrace making it possible for builders and speculators to endlessly reproduce the set pattern.

3) Important Features

Most of the original street furniture and external features of the buildings still exist in Newtown Pery, although the original character of the interior has all too often been compromised.

Here are some examples of the features left in their original condition:

• Remnants of old lamps remained in the form of lamp posts may be seen at the Pery Square / Hartstonge Street corner, outside the former house of Lord Limerick on Henry Street.
• Examples of coal cellar covers set in the pavements can be seen on Pery Square and Hartstonge Street.
• Gargoyles decorated with grotesque figures may be seen on the Leamy School building on Hartstonge Street.
• Some fire plates can be seen above the balconies of numbers 2 and 3 Pery Square.
• Ward boundary plates may be seen at O'Connell Street / Lower Mallow Street corner. These plates were erected around the mid 19th century to identify the constituencies for local government elections. They were made of cast iron by the Harrison Lee Foundry.
• Mews were at that time an integral part of the townhouse. Used for stabling horses, storing carriages, they were located at the rear of the terrace in a laneway. Most of them still exist but they have often been converted into workshops, garages. The most distinguishing features of mews were the arched entrances and the hay loft above. Examples of Georgian mews may be seen on Hartstonge Street, at the back of the Tontine buildings, and on Catherine Street.
• An interesting thing about Georgian buildings is the ironwork, found on balconies (mainly on the first floor) and railings, which still survive in good condition. Examples of these features can be seen on the buildings built after 1800. Excellent Victorian and Georgian style railings and gates may be seen on O'Connell Street. An example of a protective handrail can be seen on Hartstonge Street. While the balconies of the buildings on Pery Square are rather plain, those in other streets are more pleasingly decorative and they certainly help to soften the rigid lines of the terraces. This is the case on O'Connell Street, The Crescent and Mallow Street.
• The Neo-Classical influence on railings is also evident in the decorative Grecian urns, which are placed at the intervals along the railings. These are such an ubiquitous feature of Limerick's streets that they often go unnoticed.
• Examples of bootscrappers may be seen on Barrington Street. A classical example of a bootscrapper in the shape of a Unicorn can be seen on Pery Square.
• The main focus of attention in a terrace is the door, which is always set to one side of the house. The typical Georgian doorway has a semi-circular, decorative fanlight over the entrance and Classical style wooden or stone columns framing the door. The Limerick doorways are wide, with columns merging into the brickwork, as can be seen on O'Connell Street and The Crescent.

4) Morphological Analysis

Much of the spectacular urban development that transformed Limerick after 1750 is associated with Edmund Sexton Pery, a city planner and a businessman who pioneered the Georgian architecture of which Limerick can be so proud. Pery was the descendant of Edmund Sexton, who three hundred years previously had been granted the Franciscan friary at the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII. This gave him a substantial estate within the city, but it also gave him possession of the Prior's Land, a large tract running south of the city along the river on which the Georgian Newtown was built.

Advertisements in the Limerick Chronicle in the 1800s suggest that tontines companies were set up in some cases to build terraces. One such company had started a tontine building at the corner of Mallow Street in 1806.

Two houses had been completed and the advertisement promised that they would be 'finished in a capital style . with the advantages of town and country'. They were offering a renewable lease, 'renewable forever'. The crossing streets whose buildings were of similar value and size are often treated more sensitively.

A larger house might occupy the corner plot, be double fronted and have windows to both streets. A house on George's Street would typically be about 28 feet wide and about 70 feet long including an extension. The length of the main part was about 50 feet. Typically this part was divided into two; two rooms with the central load-bearing wall, and two roof trusses each spanning about 20-25 feet.

These measurements were reduced for the houses in cross streets; in Mallow Street widths were 20, spans 10 and extensions varied. Standardised sizes were related to location with smaller houses in the less prestigious locations. Heights varied with widths: in Mallow Street there were four smaller floors. Builders were able to handle the change in scale on the smaller buildings of the side streets, with windows and the spaces between them reduced in proportion to the size of the block.

By the mid 1830s most of the streets of the terraces that would eventually line them seem to have been built. The lower end of George's Street was, as it is today, colonised by shop keepers and was the location of offices. The upper part of the street, together with the side streets that led down to and lined the river were dominated by stone built stores although smaller terraces had also been built in this area. The terraces on this street were larger than those of the side streets. Doors were different, some buildings had balconies. But there was consistency; it was the doors of the higher terraces that were wider, balconies tended to occur in the later terraces.

Property had a higher value and could be larger on George's Street which, being a through route, was soon established as the main street. This simple economic principle is reflected in the buildings, with the large blocks of the main street terminating in a gable wall or giving way abruptly to the smaller blocks of the side street without any attempt to embellish the corner or make the adjustment gradually.

The 1840 map of the city details the paving and planting of the gardens behind the houses showing that the ones on George's Street were the longest and more elaborate. The smaller gardens of George's Street were to be enjoyed by means of a perimeter walk. Kitchen gardens, subdivided into smaller areas by walls, seem to have planted beside the coach houses at the side of the houses.

The evidence of other plans reveals that all notions of civic variety especially in the form of squares had not been abandoned. The crescent shape is shown to have been formed by the new buildings but the area which had not been built on was defined in the usual rectilinear way. This would suggest that the leaseholders, of which there were two, Rev. Hoare to the east and Robert O'Callaghan Newenham to the west, were responsible for developing the two concave forms. O'Callaghan Newenham's interest in creating squares can be seen in his unrealised plans for Newenham Square which was to be located beyond Richmond Place. There is an existing sketch which appeared in a lease of property made by Robert O'Callaghan Newenham to Charles Dodgeson Hoare in 1807 to enable him to built Newenham Square. The square, which would have been beyond the Crescent, was never built.

Usually the plots would be sub- divided and sub- leased. The list of lessees, persons in possession and persons paying rent at the back of the 1823 estate book suggest that subletting soon made for a complex legal situation. James Fisher subdivided a lot that he acquired in 1803. He leased a plot of ground a year later at the corner of Glentworth Street and Catherine Street to Michael Slattery, a master mason in the city, who built three houses with yards and stables.

The majority of the blocks bordering Catherine Street tended not to be leased until the early 1800s. It was twenty years from 1787 before a substantial number of the proposed blocks in the heart of Newtown Pery had been leased. It took a further fifteen years, an unusually busy period of building, before a large proportion of the brick terraces that characterise the town were built.

The firm of Joseph Fogerty seems to have expended during that period. Registered as builders in John's Square in 1824 they moved into Newtown Pery by 1840 where they had premises in Catherine Street.  

5) Architectural Qualities

Georgian blocks in Limerick were austere with decoration confined to the doorway. Ironwork was often an important addition: railings were ubiquitous but also plain, balconies which were placed on the later terraces were more ornamental. The corners of crossing streets whose buildings were of similar value and size were often treated more sensitively. A larger house might occupy the corner plot, be double fronted and have windows to both streets.

Builders were able to handle the change in scale on the smaller buildings of the side streets, with windows and the spaces between them reduced in proportion to the size of the block. A good example is the terrace on Lower Hartstonge Street to which was given a heavier stone coping so that with the articulation of base and top it more closely resembled the articulation of facades in London and Bath. This terrace is, however, an exception in Limerick. One refinement seen in London and Dublin was to design the windows so that the piers were equal or narrower than the window opening. It was not adopted in the earlier terraces in Limerick where the piers were often wider than the windows and the rooms correspondingly darker.

A different example is the terrace in Pery Square (The Tontine Buildings) which faces the square as a single unit to take advantages of the landscape and foster the illusion of a country residence. The terrace was one of the last Georgian buildings to be built in the city, and it seemed to benefit from an accumulated sense of confidence which inspired these innovations excesses.

6) Public Memorials / Historic Monuments

In the centre of People's Park there is a monument dedicated to Thomas Spring Rice, erected in about 1829 and financed by the Barrington family. Its central location suggests an intended civic function for the square. The monument is based on a Roman triumphal column and was a popular way of celebrating public figures at the time. Spring Rice might be indistinguishable from Pery (and Pery would have been the more obvious subject) but the monument is visible from the river. It was a strange form to use in what was then a far corner of the city and essentially a private enclave. Perhaps it indicates greater plans for expansion when the square would have had a more central role.

The monument to Daniel O'Connell facing O'Connell Street (former George's Street) is situated in the centre of The Crescent. The O'Connell Monument, sculpted by John Hogan, was placed on its present site in 1857 at a total cost of £1,300. Originally £1040 had been subscribed to erect a statue of Lord Fitzgibbon on this site, but when five members of the Corporation objected, the idea was abandoned.

Represented in 'his ever solemn dignity' he stands on granite plinth. The Victorian iron railings embellished with national symbols and classical motifs have subsequently been removed.

7) Notable Spaces in the Area

Pery Square was laid out in the 1830s, but its form and position seem to have been planned some years before it appears on the map of 1827 as New Square linked to George's Street and the Boherbuoy Road by a New Road. The fact that Pery Square was formed before any houses were built to overlook it suggests that there was a determination in Limerick to acquire a square. It does not appear to have been intended as a place for general public use as this entry in the directory for 1834 suggests:

''It is a cause of great regret that Limerick should be so destitute of public walks. The Wellesley Bridge is generally crowded when the weather is fine, and George's Street in the evenings. New (Pery) Square is tastefully laid out, but this walk is denied to the citizens, except such as are willing to pay a yearly rent for the privilege of having a key."

Pery Square was the first garden laid out to be seen, by the public. As a formally laid out garden with paths tracing a symmetrical pattern it resembled the private gardens. In this was influenced by newer ideas. It is an example of the later type of square or garden, which attempted to create a minor landscape in the city. The central area is raised, resembling a small hill, trees cluster about the perimeter distinguishing its limits. The layout of Pery Square was formally symmetrical with the Spring Rice column at the centre.

The monument was circulated by paths that swept in energetic curves and was surrounded by a scattering of trees; a design which owed something to the informal garden designs of the late nineteenth century.

8) Building Materials, Textures and Colours

Brick is the common material used on the Georgian buildings. In the eighteenth and nineteenth century, as the manufacture of bricks became more sophisticated, the use of various coloured bricks became popular and these were often used decoratively in patterned courses. Moulded bricks were also used in architraves, string courses, cornices, plinths and in decorative panels.

The remaining ground surfaces are features that contribute also to the special character of the area. Some of them still survive, in the form of setts, composed of a smooth square shaped stone, and may be seen on Lower Mallow Street.

9) Loss Intrusion or Damage

The negative factors which detract from the special character of the conservation area are the traffic and the on-street parking. The main disadvantage with the current traffic circulation system is that streets as Henry Street, O'Connell Street pass through the commercial area of Limerick.

The result is traffic congestion and an environment dominated by vehicles, with high volumes of both travelling and parked vehicles.

To conclude, Limerick's Architectural Conservation Area represents a unique example of 18th and 19th century planning in Ireland and its architectural and historical unity should be preserved as much as possible.

The fixed proportions and harmonious symmetry of Limerick's Georgian buildings form an architectural heritage of great urbanity and considerable beauty.