Limerick Regional Hospital, Dooradoyle
Cyril Arthur Farey after Patrick Joseph Sheahan
1941
IAA 2015/106.1
Designed from 1938 as a 278-bed county hospital by Patrick J. Sheahan (1893 – 1965), with consultants Stanley Hall and Easton & Robertson, London, the construction of Limerick Regional Hospital was delayed by WWII. Building finally commenced in 1949 and the hospital was opened by the Minister for Health, T.F. O’Higgins, in May 1955. The contractors were Murphy Bros of Cork and the cost was £900,000. The Irish Builder noted its commanding views, and ‘the cheerful colour schemes in the public wards, which have sun balconies’.
This exterior perspective of the proposed hospital, dated 1941, is the work of Cyril A. Farey (1888 – 1954). An architect by training, Farey was one of the best-known and most sought-after architectural draughtsmen of his day, charging one shilling per square inch for colour perspectives and reputedly earning an enormous £5,000 per annum at the height of his career. Aside from this view of the hospital, he also produced a perspective for a proposed Civic Centre and Court House in Limerick for Sheahan. It would appear that his only other Irish client was Rudolf Maximilian Butler.
This drawing was acquired by the late Dr John Maiben Gilmartin in 2015 and donated to the Irish Architectural Archive via the Friends of the National Collections of Ireland.