Estates United

The landed inheritance that later sustained the Pery family’s influence in Limerick was assembled through a succession of marriages connecting the Sexten, Pery, Stacpole, Twigg and Wray families. Susannah Sexten, who died in 1671, was the only daughter of Edmond Sexten and eventually inherited the property of his grandson, another Edmond. Her marriage to Edmond Pery of Croom brought the Sexten estates into the Pery family. Those lands included former religious property in and around Limerick, giving their descendants wealth, rents and a territorial position that would profoundly influence the city’s later development.

Susannah and Edmond Pery’s son, Colonel Edmond Pery, strengthened the family inheritance by marrying Dymphna, daughter and heiress of Bartholomew Stacpole of Stacpole Court in County Clare. This marriage brought the Stacpole property into the expanding Pery estate and connected lands on both sides of the Shannon. By the time Colonel Pery died in 1721, the family’s position rested upon several distinct inheritances rather than one ancestral holding. Marriage among landed families served an economic and political purpose, preserving estates, settling property claims and creating alliances capable of extending influence across county boundaries and municipal jurisdictions.

The surviving son, the Reverend Stacpole Pery, consequently inherited the combined Sexten, Stacpole and Pery properties in 1721. His succession placed in one person estates acquired through Tudor grants, seventeenth-century inheritance and marriage. The consolidation mattered greatly to Limerick because the family now controlled substantial property beside the older city, including land that could later be leased and developed. The wealth was not merely agricultural. It included urban rights, rents and strategically located ground whose value increased as Limerick’s trade, population and built environment expanded beyond the medieval walls during the eighteenth century.

Stacpole Pery had married Jane Twigg in 1716. She was the daughter of the Venerable William Twigg, archdeacon of Limerick, and inherited a modest interest through her mother, Diana. Diana Twigg was the daughter and co-heiress of Sir Drury Wray of Glentworth in Lincolnshire and brought an undivided share of the Wray estate in Ireland. That property lay conveniently near Limerick city, adding another layer to the family’s regional holdings. Through Diana, the Perys could also claim descent from the Cecil family, Viscounts Wimbledon, giving the increasingly prosperous Limerick dynasty an association with established English aristocratic lineage.

The Wray and Cecil connections were later written permanently into Limerick’s streetscape. William Cecil Pery adopted Glentworth as the title of his barony, while Cecil Street and Glentworth Street preserved the names within Newtown Pery. When the Georgian suburb developed across the family estate from the later eighteenth century, its street names became a map of inheritance, marriage and family ambition. Limerick residents walking through the district were moving across land whose ownership had been assembled over generations. The ordered terraces therefore concealed a complicated history of heiresses, clerical families, royal grants and estates gradually united in the Pery name.

1. National Library of Ireland, The Limerick Papers, Collection List No. 121, family history of the Pery, Sexten and Stacpole families and the formation of their estates.
2. National Library of Ireland, Manuscript 41,678/7, material concerning the Wray inheritance in Ireland and its location near Limerick city.
3. National Library of Ireland, Manuscripts 41,677–41,680, family, estate and legal papers concerning the Sexten, Pery, Stacpole, Twigg and Wray inheritances.
4. University of Limerick, Special Collections and Archives, Pery Family Archive, records concerning the family’s estates in Limerick city, County Limerick and County Clare.
5. Limerick local authority historical records concerning Newtown Pery and the naming of Cecil Street, Glentworth Street and other streets associated with the Pery family.