Battery

The National Monuments Service's description

Black Battery which according to Leask (1941, 103) was located just inside the mural tower (LI005-017010-) at SE angle of Irishtown, east of St. John's Gate in the hospital grounds in the city of Limerick (LI005-017----). This 17th century fortification was described by Leask (ibid.) as following; 'Close to the southern end of this long east wall (LI005-017010-), in the space now occupied by the New Road and for some distance from it towards the corner tower, was the breach made in the wall by the Williamite artillery in the siege of 1690. The Journal of John Stevens gives the width of the breach at its greatest — just before the besiegers withdrew some days subsequent to the fierce but unsuccessful assault — as forty paces. This agrees closely with the visible facts: the width of the road and the length of the repaired portion of the wall closer to the Black Battery (P on Map). This lay upon the rampart within the salient south-east tower, which still remains. It is shown on the older maps'.
The White MSS. tells that, in from 1643 —"This Year, Dominick White being Mayor of Limerick, the east rampart from St. John's Gate, towards the green called Ana Mayor Chluoin, was made." The Civil Survey (Simington 1938, 489) throws light on the position of this latter point: The Greene, commonly called Cluone, and the Bogg on ye north …..mearing on the west with the Rampier and the walls of the South Suburbs……It is fairly evident that the Cluain, or na Clony, tower is either that tentatively identified with "Cogan's Tower" or is the south-east tower. But since the rampart behind the former is—almost certainly—a work of 1690-91, the 1643 reference in the White MSS. must be to the rampart of the south wall—east of St. John's Gate in the hospital grounds—on which stood the Black Battery of the sieges, and to the tower at the angle there; evidently the tower na Clony itself'.

Compiled by: Caimin O'Brien

Date of upload: 21 November 2019

References

Leask, H.G. 1941 The ancient walls of Limerick. North Munster Antiquarian Journal 2, 95-108.

Simington, R.C. (ed.) 1938 The civil survey, AD 1654-1656. Vol. IV: county of Limerick, with a section of Clanmaurice barony Co. Kerry. Dublin. Irish Manuscripts Commission.