Overview
Limerick’s city centre is laid out on a grid because one man drew it that way in 1769. Newtown Pery is that grid, the city’s Georgian Quarter, and it holds the largest collection of Georgian townhouses outside Dublin. The streets now carry shops, cafés, hotels and galleries, but the equal rectangular blocks and uniform rooflines still show the aristocratic plan underneath.
The set piece is Pery Square, a six-house terrace finished in 1838. It is the finest late Georgian architecture in Limerick, and the locals will tell you it stands with anything of its kind in Ireland. If you only walk one street here, walk that one.
How it came about
The land was once the South Priors’ estate of the Crutched Friars. After the dissolution of the monasteries it passed to Edmund Sexton Pery, and his grandson, Viscount Edmund Sexton Pery, hired the Irish engineer Christopher Colles in 1769 to lay out a new town on the south liberties of Limerick. Colles imposed the grid that still defines the centre, with O’Connell Street – originally George’s Street – as its commercial spine.
Builders took leases and put up four- and five-storey townhouses along Bank Place, Rutland Street and Patrick Street. The double-curved Crescent and the terraces around it went up before the Great Famine halted expansion. Pery Square itself was a speculative venture by the Pery Square Tontine Company between 1835 and 1838, supervised by the architect James Pain and built by Pierse Creagh of Ennis. It was the only completed part of the wider scheme Davis Ducart had drawn for Newtown Pery, which is why it stands alone and so precisely proportioned.
Much of the area was altered during 20th-century decline, with facades knocked about and the unity worn down. Regeneration in the 2010s, backed by the €250 million Limerick 2030 plan and the Living City Initiative’s tax relief, restored the stucco, sash windows and ironwork balconies of Pery Square. Samuel Lewis called Limerick ‘one of the handsomest towns in Ireland’ in 1837; the square is the part that still earns it.
What to see and do
- Pery Square is the heart of it:
- No 1 Pery Square Hotel & Spa – a boutique hotel in the original townhouse, with 21 rooms, the restaurant No 1 and an underground spa.
- Georgian House Museum (No 2 Pery Square) – run by Limerick Civic Trust, on the city’s Georgian heritage.
- Limerick City Gallery of Art – in the Carnegie Building on the square, with a collection of Irish and international art and free entry to the permanent rooms.
- War Memorial and St Michael’s Church of Ireland, which closes the southern vista of the terrace.
- The Crescent – a double-curved Georgian terrace framing a bronze statue of Daniel O’Connell, with cafés and the Sacred Heart Church around it.
- O’Connell Street – the main retail run, with historic department stores, wine bars and the O’Connell Monument.
- People’s Park – a Victorian park opposite the square, with a bandstand, the Spring Rice memorial, a drinking fountain and a playground.
- Customs House (Hunt Museum) – a Palladian building by Davis Ducart holding over 2,500 objects, from Neolithic tools to works by Picasso and Yeats.
- Frank McCourt Museum – on the Limerick-born author of ‘Angela’s Ashes’.
Getting there
Newtown Pery sits in the centre of Limerick, a short walk from both the train station and the main bus depot. City bus routes including the 1, 2, 4 and 6 stop along O’Connell Street.
Practical information
- Opening times: People’s Park, the Crescent and the streetscape are open year-round. The museums and gallery typically run 10am-5.30pm; check individual venue sites, as hours vary seasonally.
- Entry: the park, the Crescent and the Georgian streets are free. The Hunt Museum and the Georgian House Museum charge modest admission; the Limerick City Gallery of Art is free for its permanent collection.
- Accessibility: most streets are level and wheelchair-friendly, and the hotel and museum venues have step-free access and accessible toilets.
- How long: half a day covers the streets, the museum and the gallery with a coffee on the Crescent. A full day adds the Hunt Museum, People’s Park and dinner at the hotel.