Fanningstown Castle

In the mid-seventeenth century English efforts to bring Ireland to heel were spear-headed by Oliver Cromwell's ferocious and successful military campaign. Planning to reward his soldiers with Irish land Cromwell ordered that a survey of who held what was made. It was completed in 1656 and called the Civil Survey. This reveals that Fanningstown had slipped from English control and was now in the possession of Edmund Fanning, a member of an old Anglo-Norman family that had remained Catholic and was vehemently opposed to Cromwell.

In Limerick City where Cromwell's general, Henry Ireton, had led a six-month siege, another member of the family, Dominick Fanning, an alderman, had led the resistance. By October 1651 Ireton had prevailed and Dominick Fanning was one of the twenty who were to loose 'lives and property.' He had escaped but returned to the city to retrieve some money. As his wife refused to receive him he hid in his ancestor's tomb in St Francis Abbey for three days and nights. Emerging to warm himself at a guard's fire he was identified by a former servant who denounced him to Ireton's soldiers.

One of the few remaining medieval houses in Limerick is Fanning's Castle, on Mary Street, a late medieval stone tower house, once five storeys high, with a turret staircase, ogee windows and battlements. This former residence of Dominick Fanning was one of the houses that lined the main street of English Town and so impressed foreign visitors. It is eloquent of the prominent position of a family that was supplying bailiffs and mayors for the city from the mid-fifteenth century until Cromwell's victory, when a new group of English Protestant families became dominant.

Anna Fanning, who died in 1634, is the only Fanning remembered in St Mary's Cathedral in the city; a stone slab on the floor of the chapel of St Nicholas and St Catherine bears her name.