placenamesThomond Gate
Sparr Thuamhan
Thomond Gate’s industrial history includes a distillery manager with a camera and a lace business employing local workers.
The name
A reliable full-name meaning has not been established here. The recorded Irish and English forms are given without an unsupported translation.
Recorded forms
- Sparr Thuamhan · Irish · main form · validated name
- Thomond Gate · English · main form
Place & story
A distillery manager’s photographs
John Riddell arrived from Glasgow in 1880 to manage Walker’s Distillery on Brown’s Quay in Thomondgate. Away from the business, he photographed the city and its people, including children enjoying winter and skating on the Shannon. His family photographs became the Ludlow Collection, later presented in a Limerick Archives exhibition curated by Sharon Slater in 2015. [2]
The Thomond Lace Industry
Maude Kearney established the Thomond Lace Industry in 1904. Based in Thomondgate, the business employed between fifty and eighty workers at its height. Kearney was a daughter of James Hodkinson, whose firm specialised in church decoration. Her enterprise formed part of Limerick’s wider lace-making tradition, which survived through both commercial workshops and work undertaken in people’s homes. [3]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Limerick
- Barony
- Limerick City
- Civil parish
- Saint Munchin's
- Coordinates
- 52.66255, -8.63560 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 1414151 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Thomond Gate. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Limerick Through the Looking Glass: The Ludlow Collection · Limerick Archives / Limerick City and County Council
- Heritage Week event urges public to Bring Out Your Lace · Limerick City and County Council
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2017-12-01. How this page was prepared.