Tucked away quietly off the Market Quarter, The Gathering appears, at least initially, to be no more or less than your average hobby store. Cases are filled to overflowing with painted miniatures, dice, trading cards, and rulebooks. However, the longer you find yourself standing within its walls, the more it becomes apparent that this is not so much a store as it is one of Limerick’s most venerable institutions, predating even Irish gaming culture.
The foundations laid by this shop are almost mythical. As its owner says: “It’s actually quite a cool origin story and I’ll try to keep it brief.” In the mid-90s, he was a Saturday worker at Games People Play, which was one of the first gaming shops in Ireland down on Limerick’s main street. Then the shop announced that it was closing its doors, leaving the new community that had gathered around it in disarray, a group of people who had paid £10 to join their games club. Within just ten frantic days, he acted.
One Wednesday morning, he called up the owners and asked how much they would want for the entire store. Come Thursday, he and his business partner applied for credit union loans. “They let me have everything they’ve got in the store for nine grand,” he says proudly. On Friday, passing by the former Jim Robinson fishing tackle store, which he describes as “stinking, stinking,” he laid eyes on an opportunity. “The landlord let me pay the last thousand I loaned for rent,” he explains. “The slat boards and shelves are still the same” he proudly points out.
The Gathering was born on the next Wednesday, with no electricity, no internet, or landline. “I was working out of a mobile phone, and I built it up from there.” Almost 28 years on, it remains in business, one of the oldest hobby stores in Ireland and, so its owner claims, “the longest-running gaming shop in Ireland.”
A Culture Grounded in Community
“From day one, it has felt like running a club rather than a business,” he says. “I’d like to think we were a club before we were a shop”. This reflects their approach to games, using them as a mechanism to bring people together. The store offers multiple nights a week where customers can engage in games ranging from card games to war games, and eveb nights for painting.
“A lot of folks started coming here when they were 12, 13, or 14 years old, and now they are in their mid-30s,” says the owner. This has created “a very inclusive environment, long before inclusivity became ‘a thing.’” For many years, “The Gathering” has quietly served as a haven for kids on the autism spectrum, for adolescents suffering with anxiety, for LGBTQ+ gamers, and for new gamers that can’t seem to fit in anywhere else.
“They’ll walk into Pokémon conventions in earmuffs or maybe have difficulty making eye contact,” he says about shy children. “Then, after a week or two, ‘the mother is quite happy to leave her child here and go into the market for a coffee because they know they’re in a safe environment.’ The store is operated on only three guidelines: ‘Integrity, respect, and everybody is equal.’”
A National Footprint
Long before gaming cafes became common, conventions were where Ireland turned for meeting others with shared interests. The Gathering wasn’t just in attendance at conventions; it also helped shape them.
Their inaugural con, at the old Holiday Inn on Thomas Street, was a turning point. “We hauled everything down. Tables, boards, everything,” he recalls. Their event attracted giants of the genre, as international visitors considered an Irish con something exotic. “The wizards from Seattle. Jervis Johnson. Andy Chambers. Some of the biggest names in gaming were running games in Limerick.”
The event eventually swelled in size to where they needed to find bigger premises, so they relocated to Thomond Park. “If you want to see a journey of a gaming community, from Ankey’s hall to Thomond Park, that’s a highlight,” he says. They are already organizing their 30th-anniversary event for 2027, with big names expected to attend.
A Legacy Still Growing
Despite it all, running a hobby shop can present its own set of challenges, especially with regard to social media. “There’s a certain enslavement. You must advertise, and if you don’t, it reflects on you,” he says. However, this isn’t something that defines ‘The Gathering.’
“The game you play should be a medium for meeting people you get on with,” he says succinctly about the purpose of the shop. For thirty years, this wonderful place has done just that. It remains so today as not only the longest running gaming shop in Ireland but also as part of the fabric of Limerick’s cultural heritage, a venue where thousands of people have rolled dice, forged friendships, discovered belonging, and crafted stories that will outlive all of us.