The Dooradoyle Fort

St Mary's Cathedral

Domhnall Mór

Secret Places in the Cathedral

In 1168 Domhnall Mór O Brien, King of Thomond, donated his palace to be the foundation of St Mary’s Cathedral. This is one of the most important medieval buildings in Ireland.

The cathedral is full of secret places. In olden times the sick and the diseased were not allowed into the church and received communion through a hole in the wall called “The Leper’s Squint”. One of the chapels is called the O Brien’s chapel. He was Murrough O Brien and had a reputation for burning down buildings. He was a hated figure and when he died in 1674 the local people stormed the church and they threw his corpse into the River Shannon.

Cromwell

Ireton

In 1649 Cromwell with an army of 12,000 arrived in Ireland to quell rebellion.

After cutting a path of bloodshed and destruction through Ireland he left the conquering of Limerick to his son in law Ireton. Limerick was the put under siege from June to October in 1651.

The people living inside the walls of the medieval walled city starved.

Ireton never saw England again as he died on King’s Island of the plague.

Famine and plague broke out and Hugh Dubh O Neill was forced to capitulate. Ireton hung many of those who had resisted. He stabled his horses in St Mary’s Cathedral and threw out the main altar. The altar was found on the grounds of the cathedral in the 1960’s and reinstated.