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Originally Photographed October 2026
PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE MOUNT ST LAWRENCE CEMETERY
The Urban Cartographer Presents:
Photographed By William Murphy Using A Borrowed Sony A7RVI
While cultural projects like the University of Limerick digitisation initiative, heritage trail booklets, and Open House tours aimed to frame Mount St. Lawrence as Limerick’s answer to Dublin's Glasnevin or London's Highgate, that vision has never gained genuine traction with general visitors—for several practical reasons:
Location and Environs: Situated off the Mulgrave Street / Southill corridor, it sits just outside the usual pedestrian circuit of King’s Island, the Georgian Quarter, and the riverside. For casual tourists or solo visitors without local knowledge, navigating the approach on foot can feel isolating. Even if actual incidents are rare during daylight hours, the perception of vulnerability is real enough to keep it off mainstream itineraries.
Lack of Visitor Infrastructure: Unlike Glasnevin, which succeeded as a major destination by investing in a state-of-the-art museum, an active visitor centre, full-time on-site security, guided golf-buggy tours, and a café, Mount St. Lawrence remains essentially a vast, unstaffed municipal cemetery. There is no on-site presence beyond council maintenance crews or CE workers who are occasionally present, leaving visitors entirely on their own across its 16+ acres.
Footfall and Atmosphere: When an expansive Victorian site is populated only by the occasional local dog walker or gravedigger, it creates an atmosphere that suits documentary photographers and genealogists seeking quiet study, but naturally unnerves an ordinary sightseer carrying an expensive camera.
Local vs. National Pantheon: Glasnevin and Mount Jerome draw international tourists because they hold household names like Michael Collins, Daniel O'Connell, and W.B. Yeats' circle. Mount St. Lawrence’s significance is deeply rooted in local social, ecclesiastical, and commercial history—the mayors, the lace manufacturers, the tobacco merchants like the Spillanes, the 1916/revolutionary figures, and clergy like the Shanahans.
For locals tracing lineage or historians examining the 19th-century Catholic urban fabric, it is irreplaceable; for an international or weekend tourist looking for a casual cultural afternoon, that nuance rarely registers.
The prevalence of cast-iron grave markers in Irish cemeteries from the late 19th century through the 1920s was a convergence of industrial technology and social economy, rather than a purely high-society fashion.
Cost vs. Stonemasonry: Carving a memorial from native limestone or imported Italian Carrara marble required hours of skilled manual stonecutting and lettering, placing substantial stone monuments beyond the financial reach of many working- and lower-middle-class families.
Foundry-cast iron offered an accessible, highly decorative alternative.
Catalogue Culture and Foundries: Following the Industrial Revolution, foundries across Ireland (including local Limerick foundries and Dublin firms) and Britain (such as Walter Macfarlane’s Saracen Foundry in Glasgow) published extensive mail-order pattern books. Families could choose standard cross designs, intricate kerbing, and filigree railings.
Why the Kitty Bankes Marker Stands Out: Many lower-tier metal markers used a generic blank cast-iron cross fitted with a cheap zinc or tin plaque that easily corroded or detached over time. The 1925
Kitty Bankes marker is a superior specimen:
The lettering ("IN LOVING MEMORY OF KITTY BANKES / DIED 18TH MARCH 1925 / AGE 19 YRS / THY WILL BE DONE / R.I.P.") is cast directly into the iron mould using movable foundry type inserts prior to pouring.
It incorporates a classic ringed Celtic cross silhouette with crisp raised bevels.
It survives complete with its matching cast iron perimeter kerb rails and corner posts, representing a substantial, permanent family investment that has outlasted many contemporary soft stone markers.
Mount St. Lawrence opened in 1855 as Limerick’s primary Catholic burial ground, replacing overcrowded inner-city churchyards like St. John’s in the wake of the Great Famine. The architectural landscape of its memorials directly reflects the theological and cultural politics of post-Famine Irish Catholicism:
Dominance of the Celtic Cross: During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Gaelic Revival coincided with the devotional revolution in the Irish Catholic Church. The High Cross/Celtic Cross became the ultimate twin statement of orthodox Catholic faith and Irish national identity. It was promoted heavily by clergy, monumental sculptors, and nationalist movements, rapidly becoming the standard design for family plots and republican memorials alike.
The Rarity of the Broken Column:
The broken column—a staple of Victorian funerary iconography representing a life cut short or the sudden loss of the head of a family—derived from classical Greco-Roman and Romantic Protestant funerary aesthetics (often linked with Masonic or neoclassical cemetery traditions like Mount Jerome in Dublin or the Glasgow Necropolis).
In a predominantly conservative Catholic municipal cemetery like Mount St. Lawrence, classical pagan allegories were generally eschewed. Funerary art focused on overt symbols of salvation, resurrection, and divine intercession: Calvary scenes, ringed crosses, Marian figures, the Sacred Heart, and the standard Roman cross. A broken column—suggesting rupture, finality, and classical tragedy—clashed with the Catholic emphasis on eternal afterlife and bodily resurrection.
The tidy condition of Mount St. Lawrence today is the product of major, relatively recent remediation efforts; it was not always well kept.
Mid-to-Late 20th-Century Decline: As families emigrated, plots aged, and the older acreage filled up, large swathes of the Victorian sections fell into severe neglect during the 1960s through the 1990s. Heavy brambles, self-seeded sycamores, ivy, and subsidence swallowed older graves, toppling headstones and burying iron kerbs under dense turf.
Council & Community Turnaround: After management transferred to Limerick Corporation (now Limerick City and County Council), sustained rehabilitation began. Long-running Community Employment (CE) and FÁS teams systematically cleared decades of unchecked scrub, uprighted displaced headstones, cut back invasive root systems, and restored access to lost pathways.
Academic Digitisation (2010s): The cemetery's revival gained momentum through a landmark joint project between the University of Limerick (UL), Limerick Archives, and the City Council. By digitising more than 70,000 burial records and systematically photographing and GPS-mapping every surviving marker, the site was transformed into an accessible open-air archive, spurring families to return and maintain ancestral plots.
The Spillanes of Mount St. Lawrence
The monument pictured in some of my photographs marks the family vault of William Spillane D.L., J.P. and his descendants—one of the most influential commercial and civic dynasties in Victorian and early 20th-century Limerick.
The faces of this multi-tiered neoclassical/Gothic limestone and marble monument record three generations of the family, including John Aloysius Spillane (d. 1913), a prominent member of the Limerick Chamber of Commerce, alongside his wife Marie and their children (including young Muriel, Edna, Violet, Helena, and Olive, whose passing in 1978 marked the end of an era).
Origin and Etymology of the Name
Gaelic Roots: The surname Spillane derives from the Irish Ó Spealáin. Meaning: The root is speal, the Irish word for a scythe, paired with the diminutive suffix -án—translating to "the little scythe" or metaphorically denoting a reaper/mower.
Sept Origins: Historically, there were distinct septs bearing the name:
By the 19th century, branches of the family had moved into urban trade, with the Limerick Spillanes becoming prominent members of the emerging Catholic merchant class in post-Emancipation Ireland. The Limerick Tobacco Empire: "The House of Garryowen"
In 1829, John Spillane established a tobacco manufactory on Sarsfield Street. Trading as G. Spillane & Co. Ltd. (popularly known as The House of Garryowen), the business grew into the largest tobacco importer and manufacturer in Munster:
Famous Brands: They were celebrated across Ireland for their dense, molasses-cured plug tobaccos, notably Garryowen Plug ("Smoke Garryowen Plug – It Satisfies"), Treaty Plug, Warship Long Square, and fine snuffs. At its peak, the firm employed over 100 people at its riverside works.
William Spillane & "The Snuff Box": The patriarch of the vault, William Spillane (1839–1897), served as Mayor of Limerick in 1870, High Sheriff, and Deputy Lieutenant for the city. During his mayoralty, the Corkanree Embankment along the River Shannon was completed. To commemorate this—and to assist river navigation—a distinctive stone beacon tower was erected on the Shannon marshes near the docks. Due to the family's tobacco trade, the tower was dubbed "The Snuff Box" (or Spillane’s Tower), an informal moniker Limerick boatmen and locals use to this day.
What Happened to the Family and the Business?
The Shift in Consumer Habits: Spillane’s business was built on plug tobacco, twist, and snuff for pipes and chewing. In the decades following the First World War, consumer preferences shifted rapidly toward mass-produced, machine-rolled paper cigarettes, a market dominated by multinational conglomerates like Player’s and W.D. & H.O. Wills.
Factory Closure (1958): Regional independent manufactories found it difficult to adapt to high import duties and the industrial dominance of mass-market brands. After nearly 130 years of continuous operation, Spillane’s Tobacco Factory closed its doors in 1958. The factory site on Sarsfield Street was later cleared and redeveloped into modern retail premises.
The Later Generations: As industrial manufacture wound down, subsequent generations dispersed into professional fields, administration, and civic life in Dublin and abroad, with surviving daughters and relatives residing quietly in Limerick well into the late 20th century.
The Republican Plot contains the graves of over twenty men and women who were involved in the struggle for political independence and with the republican tradition, including former Mayors of Limerick Michael O’Callaghan and George Clancy, who were both killed by British security forces on 7 March 1921. Sean South was buried in this plot in 1957 and Kate O’ Callaghan, who had been elected to the Dáil in 1922-1923, was buried here with her husband in 1961
The monument commemorates the Shanahan brothers, who were high-ranking Catholic churchmen and domestic prelates (hence the title Reverendissimus / R.mo and episcopal-style clerical dress with mozzetta and collar).
The line at the base of the panel confirms their sibling relationship and the purpose of the monument: "HOC MONUMENTUM, FRATRES DEVOTISSIMI, FIERI FECERUNT" ("This monument their most devoted brothers caused to be made").
The brothers were not all buried here; this structure functions as a combined family burial plot and memorial cenotaph.
Who the Brothers Were
Very Rev. Timothy R. Shanahan (R.mo Timotheo R. Shanahan)
Role & Office: Parish Priest of St. Munchin’s in Limerick (Eccl. Sancti Munchini Parocho), Dean of the Diocese of Limerick (Dioec. Limericen. Decano), and Vicar General (et Vicario Generali).
Death: He died on 14 May 1915 (XIV Maii MCMXV) at the age of 89 (anno LXXXIX suae aetatis), in the 59th year of his priesthood (et LIX sacri presbyteratus).
Burial Status: Buried here in Mount St. Lawrence. As Dean of the Diocese and long-serving pastor of St. Munchin’s, his obsequies took place in Limerick and he was interred directly in this plot.
Right Rev. Monsignor Gerald Augustine Shanahan (R.mo Giraldo Augustino Shanahan)
Role & Office: Born in County Limerick (in comit. Limerici natus), he ministered in England for 56 years (in Angl. ann. LVI pastor indefessus). He was the long-serving rector/parish priest of St. Patrick’s Church in Thornaby-on-Tees (Eccl. S. Patricii apud Thornaby-on-Tees Parocho), a Canon of the Diocese of Middlesbrough (Dioec. Medioburg. Canonico), and was created a Domestic Prelate / Monsignor by Pope Pius X (A Pio P. X ornato).
Death: He died on the Kalends of February 1937 (1 February 1937 / Kal. Feb. A.D. MCMXXXVII) aged 79 (aet. LXXIX).
Burial Status: Not buried in Limerick. Monsignor Gerald Shanahan died in England, where he had spent over half a century building schools and ministering to Irish emigrant communities on Teesside. He was interred in the Diocese of Middlesbrough (Thornaby-on-Tees). His inscription here serves as a memorial/cenotaph erected in his native county by his family.
The Third Brother (Third Inscription Panel & Bust) The octagonal spire monument has carved relief portraits on multiple sides framed by polished granite colonnettes (evident in the profile and frontal portrait busts shown). The third panel commemorates another priest brother who also served on the English missions or in the Irish church and contributed to the erection of this family monument.
The Monument's Form
Because members of the family served abroad in the Catholic diaspora while Dean Timothy remained the clerical anchor at home in Limerick, the Shanahan monument was designed as an elaborate civic and ecclesiastical marker—ensuring the family's contributions to the Church both in Ireland and across the Irish Sea were recorded in their native soil.
The neo-Gothic Church c.1855 was designed as a mortuary chapel by local architects M and S Hennessy, who also designed the spire of St. John’s Cathedral. It was designed in Celtic and Gothic Revival styles with an Arts and Crafts influenced interior
The first records are that of