The Limerick Protestant Young Men’s Association (LPYMA) was founded in 1853 to provide and maintain suitable premises and grounds to encourage literary and scientific study, cultivate artistic taste, create good fellowship and provide spiritual, moral, social and physical improvement among its members. A permanent headquarters for the Association was acquired in 1875 at 97 George Street (later renamed O’Connell Street), to which a new gymnasium and lecture hall were added two years later. A sports ground was purchased in 1920 at Farranshone. The Association was governed by a president, vice-presidents, treasurer, secretaries and a committee of thirteen members elected during the annual general meetings. Among its other duties, the Committee was responsible for the approval and general control of clubs which operated within the Association and which were managed by their own sub-committees. The most important of such clubs were those for Hockey, Lawn Tennis, Cricket and Bowls, which in 1938 amalgamated into a unified Sports Club. The Association also operated a billiards room, and a large library and reading room. Prospective members had to belong to one of the reformed branches of the Christian Church and be of respectable moral conduct. Women were eligible and were exempt from the subscription fee provided that they had a male relative who was also a member. The Association’s popularity began to wane from the 1960s onwards. It remains in existence, but mostly in an administrative capacity to oversee the maintenance of its premises.
Limerick Socialist was a monthly publication produced by the Limerick Socialist Organisation and edited by Jim Kemmy.
The Odellville estate passed from the Morony to the Lloyd family through the marriage of Helen Mary Matilda Morony to Edward Locke Lloyd of Heathfield, county Limerick, in 1917. Their only child, Helen Lucia Lloyd, married in 1945 Michael Allott of Dublin.
Founded in 1950 by Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin under the name Gala Performances of Ballet. It was later renamed, Festival Ballet, then London Festival Ballet, and finally, in June 1989, English National Ballet, under which name it continues to operate.
Timothy Looney, a native of Cahir, county Tipperary, was born in 1914. A well-known local historian, he could regularly be found exploring local castles, churches, graveyards and sites of archaeological interest. He was known to challenge established beliefs and traditions and to use the evidence of cross-disciplinary elements such as documents and landscapes to offer alternative interpretations. His house on Pearse Street, a treasure trove of maps, books, documents and photographs, was a popular port of call for genealogists tracing their ancestors and for scholars researching historical topics. Looney’s collecting activities culminated in a remarkable salvage operation to recover papers from Shanbally Castle, county Tipperary prior to its destruction by a controlled explosion in March 1960.
In addition to his historical pursuits, Looney was an active member of his local community. He had a lifelong interest in the GAA, and was influential in the development of Gaelic games in Cahir. He was a tireless charity worker and fundraiser. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, he organised volunteers to travel around the country to collect money for the Central Remedial Clinic, known as the Little Willie Fund, to aid the plight of polio victims. A supporter of the trade union movement, he was also active in the Irish Transport and General Workers Union. He had a great fondness for Cahir, and campaigned prominently to save its historical railway station. Timothy Looney died in his native town in 1990.
Seán Lysaght was born in 1957 and grew up in Limerick. He was educated at UCD, where he received a BA and an MA in Anglo-Irish Literature. He spent several years in Switzerland and Germany before returning to Ireland to teach and pursue further studies at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth. In 1996, he received a PhD for his biographical study of Irish natural historian Robert Lloyd Praeger, which was published two years later by the Four Courts Press as Robert Lloyd Praeger: The Life of a Naturalist. He now lives in Westport and lectures at the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology.
Lysaght’s early ventures into poetry won acknowledgment in 1975 at the North Cork Writers’ Festival in Doneraile, where he received first prize in the under 18 category with his poems 'The Geese', 'Sacrilege' and 'They Cast off Youth'. He also won an award at the annual Patrick Kavanagh poetry festival in 1985. Lysaght’s first collection of poems, Noah’s Irish Ark, was published in 1989 by the Dedalus Press. His second collection, The Clare Island Survey (Gallery, 1991) was nominated for The Irish Times/ Aer Lingus poetry award. In 2007, Lysaght received the prestigious O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry. His work draws heavily on the natural world, combined with allusions to literature and legend. According to Lysaght, ‘poetry should be a negotiation between what we know to be our limits and the revelation of something we didn’t even realise was there in the first place.’