*Dr Paul O’Brien and William Banks.
A BOOK by a Kilrush academic has helped to raise €55,000 to expand the services offered by Down Syndrome Limerick.
Stories and photographs from many of the pubs across Limerick City are included in the book, ‘Limerick City Pubs 1850 – 2024: Taprooms, Taverns and Alehouses’ which was released last July.
Written during the COVID-19 pandemic when casual conversations about lamenting visits to the pub and their importance for social interaction later turned to a major research and then a book, the authors are Kilrush native, Dr Paul O’Brien and fellow author William Banks.
Accounts of the pub trade dating back to the mid 1800s along with old photographs, order books, invoices plus oral history and stories from many of the city’s older bar tenders and owners are included in the publication. Over 500 photographs and research into 800 pubs are in the book.
€55,000 has been raised in sales from the book to assist the expansion of services from
Down Syndrome Limerick which helps families and individuals with Down Syndrome through a range of Social, Education and Development activities.
Research compiled detailed that over fifty percent of pubs down the decades were owned by women, even though women frequenting public houses was not a feature of the country’s social life at all during the 60s and 70s. It also noted that up to 170 of the 800 pubs featured have now closed, at least 110 of which since the early 1970s.
Owner of the well-known Souths Pub on Limerick’s O’Connell Avenue, David Hickey has links stretching to South-East Clare. “I’m in the trade all my life and indeed my family before me started out in a small pub in Clonlara in Clare,” he said. “What strikes me is how bars have changed so much over the decades, how sophisticated they have become as social locations, and an important part of people’s lives,” he added. “The pub trade is heavily regulated now and in addition to that, there have been so many pubs which have closed. There was a 32 percent drop in the number pubs in Limerick since 2005”.
Dr O’Brien said the book really was a trip down memory lane for the city’s pubs and taverns but an important historical record of the city’s pubs, many which are also housed in old historic buildings. “The stories of the many pubs of Limerick are an important part of the history and identity of our city. These are histories that need to be both preserved and celebrated, and it’s important that we can keep these fondly remembered places and people alive for future generations”.
A spokesperson for Down Syndrome Limerick said “we feel extreme gratitude to Paul O’Brien and William Banks for their selfless generosity towards our members and are in awe of their skills and talent which complement each other so well in honouring nostalgia while creating this unique historic reflection of Limerick through the decades. These are the innovative projects that can make such a difference to our members and the services we provide in Down Syndrome Limerick”.
Paul received received his doctorate from the Department of History at Mary Immaculate College where he lectures. In 2016, he was a research fellow at Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris. He is a recipient of the Military Heritage Trust of Ireland award for his research into recruitment practices during the First World War. He has also published a book on The Glynns of Kilrush, the provincial entrepreneurial family who came to local prominence in the early years of the nineteenth century.
