To Limerick City Council offices this evening, where the family of Cecil Mercier, Mill Manager of Bannatyne’s in Limerick and later supervisor of all Ranks mills in Ireland, were handing over his papers to the Limerick City Council Archive.
No photos of the Ranks boats that worked on the Shannon, alas, but perhaps there are some in the archives.
A booklet, Cecil Mercier & the Limerick Rank Mills, was distributed (free): an interesting account of the man and the industry. But it contains this sentence:
At the turn of the twentieth century there were other flour and animal feed mills in and around the city such as the Lock Mills at the junction of the Abbey River and the Grand Canal and the maize mills in Mount Kenneth and Mallow Street.
The canal in Limerick is one of five sections of the Limerick Navigation, and has recently been dubbed the Park Canal. It was not constructed by the Grand Canal Company. It was not owned by the Grand Canal Company. It was not operated by the Grand Canal Company. The only connection between that canal and the Grand Canal is that the Grand Canal Company was permitted to operate its boats on the route and was provided with premises at the canal harbour in Limerick. It put its name on the transhipment canopy, and perhaps that may have given people the mistaken idea that the Grand Canal Company owned the canal. But during the period when the GCC operated its boats, the canal was owned and operated by the Board of Works (Shannon Navigation).
Irish waterways history 