St Mary's Cathedral

This history of St Mary's Cathedral is one that stretches back to ancient times. According to tradition the church was founded by a King Donal O'Brien towards the latter half of the twelfth century on the site of his palace. This in turn was built on the site of an earlier palace church and before that the site was believed to be the centre for the pagan Norse settlement of Limerick.

The earliest record of bells at the cathedral is not quite so old though, dating back a mere seven hundred years! These were in the form of four brass bells, presented to the cathedral by John Budson.

There is no further record of the bells until 1670 when Mayor William Yorke presented the cathedral with a ring of six new bells. The tenor bell would have weighed about eighteen cwt in the key of F. These were cast by William and Roger Perdue of Salisbury. Sadly William York died before the project was completed, and is buried in the cathedral. Nobody knows quite what happened to Budson's bells though, but it is assumed that they were melted down and used to make Yorke's bells. The ring was augmented in 1703 with a new treble and second bell.

There are two other key figures in the history of St Mary's bells. The first is Sir Alec Shaw who had the third recast. The other is Mr Everard Hewson who not only had the defective fourth bell replaced, but also had the treble, second, seventh and tenor bells recast. All of this work was undertaken by Taylors of Loughborough.