Survey Data
Reg No
21521080
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Artistic, Historical, Social
Original Use
Almshouse
In Use As
Convent/nunnery
Date
1860 - 1870
Coordinates
156955, 155887
Date Recorded
29/06/2005
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Attached nine-bay two-storey limestone former almshouse, built c. 1860, with a single-bay two-storey breakfront end bays and gabled central breakfront with angled corner buttresses, three-sided canted bay window with blocked-up limestone tracery and pointed arch opening above with Perpendicular Gothic tracery. Pitched artificial slate roof with intersecting gabled breakfront roofs. Elaborate limestone chimneystacks with stop-chamfered corners and emphatic stepped coping. Plain clay pots. Limestone corbels support cast-iron rainwater goods. Squared rubble limestone walls throughout with limestone ashlar dressing comprising quoins, gable parapet copings, and door and window surrounds. Mullioned square-headed window openings, limestone ashlar surround, flush canted limestone sills and uPVC windows throughout. Square-headed door opening with limestone ashlar surround, limestone step and tongued and grooved panelled timber door with wrought-iron hinges. Multi-paned overlight. Diamond window opening with coloured glass margin-paned light. Surviving examples of original window frame comprising one-over-one margin-paned timber sash window with coloured glass margins, located behind mullions. Multiple outbuildings to rear.
Appraisal
This fine almshouse, located to the northwest of the convent and chapel, appears to post-date the convent but was completed before the 1872 Ordnance Survey Map, on which it is present. It is quite simply composed with most elaboration and detail given to the chimneystacks. Mount Saint Vincent derives its name from the French Saint Vincent de Paul. The site was formerly known as Mount Kenneth, prior to the construction of the convent here in 1851. Catherine McAuley established the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy in 1831. The order was established in Limerick in 1838, with the support of the then Bishop Ryan of Limerick. The order flourished in Limerick City and County with convents established in Newcastlewest, Rathkeale and Adare.