McCourt's ashes to remain in Limerick city as artefacts from closed museum find new home

THE ASHES of the late Frank McCourt, along with other artefacts are set to stay in the Angela’s Ashes biographer’s homeplace - just around the corner from their former home in the Frank McCourt museum. 

The news to transfer items from the collection to The People’s Museum of Limerick has been welcomed by the late Frank’s wife, Ellen, who said the new location is “eminently suitable”.

Ellen visited Limerick earlier this week to donate selected items to their new pride of place at the No 2 Pery Square building, where the items will be launched to the public in the new year.

 “We’ve known for some time that the Frank McCourt museum was slated to close and there didn’t seem to be a knight on a white horse riding in to save it,” said Ellen, who was widowed in 2009 when Frank was aged 78 after 15 years of marriage. 

“I wasn’t happy about it of course, so we searched for an alternative. We checked out the People’s Museum to see if it would work, not be entirely recreated but to continue the legacy,” she added. 

“I thought it was fitting, it’s right around the corner from Leamy house. Frank played in People’s Park, he went to the Carnegie Library, he thought about the doomed girls in the Protestant church - it’s all here. It all seemed very appropriate to me.

“This is the solution to our problem, rather than shut up shop and dismantle everything, let’s move it over here - it keeps it in Limerick. It doesn’t make sense to move it elsewhere.”

It was announced in September this year that the Frank McCourt Museum at the former Leamy School on Hartstonge St would permanently close due to a lack of regular funding, according the museum’s curator and founder Una Heaton. 

The decision to close the museum was due to Una no longer being able to afford the rent, rates or insurance after she claimed that Limerick City and County Council failed to support the attraction. 

In response to her comments, Limerick City and County Council said it regretted to hear the “privately-owned and operated Frank McCourt Museum is due to close”.

The council also said Frank McCourt “will always have a presence in Limerick”.

“Limerick City and County Council would be delighted to accept a selection of the Frank McCourt collection on behalf of the people of Limerick if it was offered by the owners.

“Unfortunately, Limerick City and County Council is not in the position to buy the collection or licence the rights to use the name.”

The building in Limerick’s Georgian quarter was given to Una by her husband John in 2011, but had to put it on the market and was sold to a new owner in 2017. 

“The Frank McCourt museum was about his childhood and Leamy House itself. It’s a memoir, a snapshot in time - it’s about how Frank remembered it, it’s his personal recollection,” explained Ellen. 

“I think Una did a brilliant job of pulling everything together. It was very personal and intimate and was interactive for everyone. Una really created a whole sense of Frank’s childhood.

“The People’s Museum has every good intention of taking artefacts that are afforded them and displaying them in as much of their space as it relates to Limerick as a city, not very specifically to Frank, though there will be a Frank section. Limerick Civic Trust, who run the People’s Museum of Limerick, will integrate Frank’s items into the larger story of the city in the last century.

“The items I donated, photographs, rosary beads, awards and things like that have been transferred,” she added, “it would be my desire to have as much of what is there now moved over. I’m in favour of maintaining Frank’s connection and legacy in Limerick.”

David O’Brien of Limerick Civic Trust said: “We are delighted to announce that Frank McCourt’s artefacts will remain in Limerick, right around the corner from its old home.”