King John's Castle
— limestone the Shannon has watched for eight centuries.
Not only on a wall.
“A five-sided keep on King's Island, where the Shannon bends through Limerick. King John of England ordered it raised around 1210, less than a century after the Normans landed in Ireland. The thick limestone walls have held through the Cromwellian guns of 1651 and the long Williamite siege of 1691, and were still standing when the modern visitor centre was cut into the courtyard. The Vikings had a longphort on this same bend of the river three hundred years before the castle went up. Stand at the curtain wall at low tide and the Shannon is right below you.
King John's Castle, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
King John's Castle stands on King's Island, the low limestone island formed where the River Shannon meets the Abbey River at Limerick. The keep was raised between roughly 1200 and 1212 on the orders of King John of England, then Lord of Ireland, to hold the Norman frontier in Munster. King's Island sits at the centre of Limerick's Medieval Quarter, a short walk from St Mary's Cathedral, which predates the castle by some thirty years. The Shannon, at 360 kilometres the longest river in Ireland, has been a strategic crossing at Limerick since long before either church or keep.
The keep is built of Limerick limestone, the same grey-blue stone that forms the city's medieval cathedrals and the river quays. Its plan is unusual: a five-sided polygon with round towers at four of the corners, an early experiment in keepless castles where the curtain wall and the gatehouse do the work of a central donjon. The walls have absorbed two of the heaviest sieges in Irish history, Henry Ireton's Cromwellian assault in 1651 and the long Williamite siege of 1691 that ended with the Treaty of Limerick signed on a stone near the Thomond Bridge. Each siege left its mark in the courtyard masonry.
The castle is operated by Shannon Heritage and open through the year, with reduced winter hours. A 2013 redevelopment placed a modern interpretive centre inside the courtyard; the exhibition walks through the Viking longphort, the Norman conquest, the Cromwellian and Williamite sieges, and the long post-treaty centuries when the keep was used as a barracks. Admission is charged at the gate, and the courtyard archaeology is included. The walk from St Mary's Cathedral, across the Abbey River bridge, takes about ten minutes. A west-facing terrace looks out across the Shannon toward Thomondgate; Limerick weather being what it is, a coat earns its keep.