work took place and its final stage was completed in September 2008. Clare Street Campus Clare Street originally backed onto the walls of the Irishtown and derives its name from John Fitzgibbon, the 1st Earl of Clare who was Lord Chancellor of Ireland from 1789 to 1802. James O'Sullivan, a tobacco merchant, constructed the street on swampy land known as Múin na Muice, the moor or common of the pigs, and dedicated it to Fitzgibbon. The Clare Street Campus is located on the site of an old Lancastrian School, developed by Joseph Lancaster for the education of the poor in the early 19th century. Lancaster was a Quaker, born in London in 1788, who had devoted himself to the education of the poor. His system was to employ the more advanced boys as monitors, or assistant teachers, to enable a few masters to teach a large number of boys. Spelling and reading were taught from charts hung on the walls, thereby dispensing with the need for books for the poor and slates were used to write on, to save paper. His first school was founded in London in 1801 and his school in Limerick was probably founded around 1806. The entrance to the school was on Old Clare Street and this street became known locally as The Long Can, after the Lancastrian School. Attendance figures dropped at the school and it gradually fell into disrepair. In November 1821, The Christian Brothers purchased the school for £200. In 1858, they let part of the garden to Madame De Beligond, superioress of the Good Shepherd Convent at an annual rent of £10. When the Christian Brothers left the building in 1888, they sold it to the nuns for £200. They established a girls' reformatory on the site of the old Thomond Brewery, adjacent to the convent, which was one of three breweries still in operation in Limerick city in the 1870s. It was sold to the nuns in 1879 and demolished to construct the reformatory to house young women who had become pregnant out of wedlock. They also established a Magdalene laundry on another adjacent site which had been a public execution ground in the 16th and 17th centuries, known as the Farrancroghy execution site. They continued to operate the reformatory and the laundry at the site until it was sold to the Regional Technical College in 1994. Major refurbishment and construction