If Walls Could Talk! Quinlan Street - the shortest of the principal Limerick streets

LOCATED between the Crescent and O’Connell Avenue, Quinlan Street is the shortest of the principal streets in Limerick city measuring approximately 121 feet in length.

It contains only seven buildings. Despite its diminutive size, the street has a varied and vibrant history and has been home to countless families, public houses, a bakery, a school, a post office, and shops.

Several businesses still trade on the street including the well-known public house, WJ Souths whose owners, the Hickey family, recently celebrated fifty years in business.

This column will trace the history of Quinlan Street over the following weeks. The street is believed to be named after Thomas Quinlan (c.1780-1843), a coach builder whose factory was located on Shannon Street.

Thomas married Miss McSweeney of Bridge Street. The Quinlan family lived on Barrington Street. His business must have been profitable as he also owned the large Temple Mungret House in the county.

Quinlan acted as a local magistrate, a role often filled by prosperous merchants. He retired in March 1840 and sold his extensive stock including coaches of all types: phaetons, chariots, gigs, tax carts and one dozen outside cars.

The notice in the Limerick Chronicle also stated that his premises would be ‘easily adapted for coal and iron manufactory, it being central from George’s Street and the new line of quays’, an indication of the booming economy of Limerick in the early 1840s.

High-rise building near Limerick park 'too high'

From the eighteenth century onwards, coach building was an essential trade in the city and several manufacturers conducted extensive business including Anthony Carroll in 1769, William Phayer from 1838 and William Christy in the late nineteenth century.

In 1858, Thomas’ son James Thomas Quinlan (1808-1875) renewed the ground lease from the Earl of Limerick at a rate of 28 pounds, three shillings and two pence.

This rental agreement also included the Barrington Street buildings. According to the Sale of Limerick Catalogue of 1907, Robert O’Callaghan Newenham leased nos. 3-7 Quinlan Street in 1801, subsequently the Newsom family of merchants held the lease from 1865.

As was typical for the time, the daughters of leading merchants almost always married into families of a similar status.

In 1861 Thomas Quinlan’s daughter married Eugene Keogh of the Thomond Distillery.

John Thomas Quinlan died at his home, Green Park in Bruff in 1875. He left the princely sum of £35,000.

Quinlan Street remained unchanged until the 1880s when John Byrnes added another building to the street in an old mews entrance.

It was situated on the site of WJ South’s, and resulted in the buildings numbered 4, 5 and 6 becoming 5, 6 and 7.

These have been the only changes to the original building numbers to have taken place since the street was developed.

Hot spell sees Limerick cars covered in dust, as Saharan sand falls

The house contained a drawing room, back and front rooms measuring 20 x 16 feet and 16 x 12 feet, dining room, breakfast room, library, hall and landing, pantry, five bedrooms, and a large kitchen. Jervis eventually moved to no. 10 the Crescent where he died in 1853.

The contents of his house included fine Chippendale and Sheraton furniture, paintings, crimson curtains and a French pendule clock.

No. 2
Thomas Masters Usborne was the first person to live at no. 2 Quinlan Street.

Contemporary newspaper accounts suggest that he lived there from about 1839 to 1845. Thomas M. Usborne was a corn merchant who had extensive milling concerns in Cork, Limerick, and Tralee from where he exported large quantities of grain in the mid-nineteenth century.

On August 12, 1837 he married Margaret Hillier at St Marys, Limerick. Their son Thomas Usborne was born in Limerick in 1840 and served as an MP from 1892-1900.

He lived at Writtle in the UK – buildings and streets in the town still bear the Usborne family name.

Thomas Masters Usborne possessed considerable landed property in the counties of Cork, Kerry, and Clare. He died at Blackrock, Co. Cork in 1883. In 1852, Captain Archdall of the 14th Regiment sold no. 2.

The sale notice described the contents as ‘comprising every requisite necessary for the furnishing of a respectable house.’
Other individuals who lived at the house in the intervening years include James P. Campbell, Henry Vereker, Esq., MA, George Hickson, Mrs Margaret Delaney, Miss Harris and Miss Shannon.

Dr Paul O’Brien lectures at Mary Immaculate College.