Original LCCC Burial Registers:
Mount Saint Lawrence Old Cemetery Project
The first in a series of projects aimed at documenting the social history of Limerick through one of the country’s largest cemeteries has been completed with the launch of an online, searchable database of 70,000 people buried at Mount St. Lawrence Cemetery.
Staff from Limerick Archives in conjunction with the History Department of Mary Immaculate College of Education, have spent two years manually transcribing thousands of handwritten records of those buried at Mount St. Lawrence Cemetery between 1855 and 2008. The records include the name, age, address and grave location of those buried in the 164-year-old cemetery. View the online searchable database here
Thanks to the work of Limerick Museum and Archives (LM&A) and the students and staff from the Geography and History Departments of Mary Immaculate College, an online map of all grave markers at Mount St. Lawrence Cemetery is now available to search online. View the searchable map here
Mount St Lawrence graveyard, located in the South Liberties, has been the primary place of burial in Limerick City for all strata of society since its opening in 1849. Its development was initiated as burial ground capacity elsewhere in the city was placed under pressure following cholera epidemics in the 1830’s and the Great Famine in the 1840’s. An extension to Mount St Lawrence was opened in 1960. The management of the cemetery was transferred from the Church to the Limerick City Council in 1979.
Mount Saint Lawrence contains plots reserved for particular groups, including religious and diocesan graves and the Republican plot. One of the largest is the Good Shepherd Plot where 241 women who had passed through its reformatory for girls, industrial school and Magdalene asylum on Clare Street were buried. They were unmarked until a campaign resulted in the erection of markers listing by name the women interred there.