Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent,  8 March 2012

Technical Memories (Part 9)

A Technical Institute is Born

A strong discussion arose on the application to be made to the Local Government Board to sanction the proposed loan of £16,000 for building a new technical institute in Cork. In addition the Department of Technical Instruction would guarantee £600 a year while the Development Grant lasted.

A very heated discussion took place at the meeting of the Cork Corporation on the 8 April 1909 in connection with the proposed Municipal Technical Institute. Councillor Sisk moved the adoption of the resolution giving out the grant outlining the gift made from Mr. Crawford and how he bought the disused brewery site on Fitton Street from Messrs. Murphy and Co. to present it to the Cork Technical Instruction Committee. He noted the Corporation in Belfast had invested £200,000 to provide an institute, Limerick Corporation was providing £11,000, and Dublin Corporation provided £150,000. Councillor (and Sir) Edward Fitzgerald said the resolution could not be considered for three months unless there was a four-fifths majority, as it upset a previous resolution. However, a vote was taken and the previous resolution was overturned. The upshot was that a resolution, which Sir Edward Fitzgerald strongly opposed, was carried by a majority.

In the 1912 Journal of the Technical Instruction Committee of Ireland, John H. Grindley, the appointed principal of the Cork institute gave a detailed description of Arthur Hill’s building and the functions of the various rooms. The entrance hall was decorated with marble plasters showing the principal varieties of Irish marbles, and the mosaic flooring also contained Irish marbles. The columns separating the main staircase from the entrance hall were of Galway granite. Opening from the entrance hall was the large examination or lecture hall, which was to seat comfortably 400 people. The hall formed practically the centre of the whole building. There was an oak dado, 8 feet high running round the room, and the wall behind the platform was a concave one, forming an excellent screen for lantern and cinematograph work. The lecture table had connections for gas, water, and electricity. The trusses, which carried the roof over this room were old trusses used in about the same positions as in the old brewery.

On the ground floor on the east side (Sharman Crawford Street) were situated the administration offices, library and physics laboratory; the general office had two enquiry office windows in the entrance hall. The library was to be used for reference and lending for home reading books on science and technology, and also had various scientific journals. The physics laboratory was fitted with four central benches and the walls were fitted with gas and electric and water supply.

On the south side of the building next to the physical laboratory was the preparation room, which served both the laboratory and the electrical engineering lecture room. The latter was fitted with a specially designed lecture bench on which electricity could be obtained from any of the machines in the electrical laboratory. Large lecture room ampere and volt-meters were installed.

On the south side of the building across the yard were two workshops for plumbing and carpentry of practically equal size. The former had a considerable part of the wall timber sheeted for the erection of students’ work and experimental apparatus. The carpentry room provided a full complement of wood-working benches and tool chests.

At the south-west corner of the main building was situated the electrical engineering laboratory, the main room been equipped with several electrical machines. The dynamos and motors were all raised on glazed glass piers, and the controlling switchboards were set along the south western wall with plenty of room to pass between and behind them in order to be able to see where each wire goes. The equipment included direct, alternating and three phase generators and motors, brakes, arc lamps, an Irwin Oscilliograph, and an experimental telephone installation. From this laboratory opened the instrument room with its adjunct room, the photometry room. It was fitted with a 10 candle power Pentane standard lamp. The instrument room contained the usual electric instruments such as galvometers.

On the ground floor on the west side was the mechanical engineering department. The laboratory contained appliances and models for the experimental study of dynamics and statics. The workshop was well equipped with modern machine tools including screw cutting lathes, one of which was designed to work with high speed tool steels, a forge, a compound vertical milling and drilling machine, a shaping machine and a drilling machine, all driven by an electric motor. The heat engine laboratory contained an oil engine, fitted up for experimental purposes, but arranged so as to drive the machines in the workshop if necessary, a steam engine, a vertical boiler to supply steam, and a bench fitted with gas and water connections for experiments on heat.

On the east side of the first floor over the entrance hall and general office were the botanical laboratory and the two engineering drawing offices. The other rooms on this floor were the building construction room, tailor’s cutting room, two introductory course classrooms, Junior dress-making room, two painters’ and decorators’ shops, printers’ workshop.

To be continued…

Caption:

631a. Staff, Crawford Municipal Technical Institute, Cork 1912 (source: Souvenir opening booklet, 1912)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town,

Cork Independent, 1 March 2012

Technical Memories (Part 8)

Arthur Hill’s Incursion

In an obituary in the Irish Independent, 16 July 1943, it notes that Arthur Frederick Crawford was born in Dublin in 1862 and educated at Eastbourne College. He was Deputy Lieutenant for County Cork and a member of the Synod of the Church of Ireland.  He was a well known as a yachtsman and a former commander of the Munster Royal Yacht Club. He was also a founder of Cork Golf Club. For a time he also joined in the meets of the United Hunt, of which he was a Joint Master for a time.

On his bequest of the building and site of Arnott’s Brewery to the Cork Technical Instruction Committee, an article in the Freeman’s Journal in February 1909 notes:

“There is a rent of £124 on the site, which is now given free of all rent and charges. The walls of the building are perfectly sound, and the ground is so solid as to obviate the necessity for extra foundations and the spending of thousands of pounds on such work. The offer is appreciated as another manifestation of the public spirit and generosity, which gave the southern city the Crawford School of Art many years ago”.

In October 1909, the tender of Samuel Hill was accepted for the building of the new institute. Irish materials were ordered to be used wherever possible, and in October 1911, the building was sufficiently advanced as to enable a full scheme of classes for the session 1911-12 to be held in it. The Institute was formally opened on 18 January 1912 by the then Lord Mayor of Cork, Alderman James Simcox.

In planning the building the chief aim of the architect Arthur Hill was to take the greatest possible advantage of the old buildings on the site and to incorporate them in the scheme so as to produce a substantial building for the amount of money available. Those old buildings, which had to be removed formed a very useful supply of building materials and it was noted that to obtain the same cubic capacity of classrooms, laboratories, the cost would have almost doubled, if full advantage had not been taken of the old buildings. The new part was built in Classic Architecture of Ballinphellic brick, and local limestone from the Little Island (County Cork) quarries.

Arthur Hill (1846-1921) was a reputable architect in his day and has left Cork city with many beautiful architectural set pieces, all of which are worth of multiple studies in themeselves. In an obituary to him in 1921 in the Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, it highlights that Arthur was born in Cork on 8 June 1846, the son of the well-known Cork architect, Henry Hill, by whom he was sent to the local School of Art at an early age. Later Arthur attended a private school for general education afterwards graduating in the Queen’s University as Bachelor of Engineering, in 1869. He served in the office of the famous architect, Thomas Henry Wyatt, at the time when the Liverpool Cotton Exchange was being erected, and attended the lectures of Professor Heyton Lewis at University College, Cork.

Arthur became a life student of the Royal Academies in London. His measured drawing of the round part of Temple Church gained for him an award of a Silver medal in 1871. He also attended classes at the Architectural Association and the West London School. His devotion to his art convinced him to travel over many parts of Europe to draw architectural objects by pencil. He expressed an enormous interest in the ancient buildings of Ireland, particularly the development of ‘Celtic Romanesque’. The Institute of British Architects, presented him with two silver medals for his careful surveys and manuscripts relating to Ardfert Cathedral, Temple Monaghan, Kilmalchedar and Cormac’s Chapel. In the early 1870s, he entered into partnership with his father, the firm being known as Henry and Arthur Hill.

At this period Arthur’s work was inspired from Gothic, Early French and ancient Irish models, which he incorporated with many of his modern draughts, such as 31 and 80, Patrick Street. The former, unfortunately, was destroyed by the burning of Cork in December 1920, and the latter was pulled down for the erection of the Pavilion Cinema in 1924. The Munster and Leinster Bank at Kilmallock is also built from plans embodying ancient architecture. The Crawford School of Art and Gallery, opening in 1885, were constructed after drawings from the firm. When his father died in 1887, Arthur took direction of the firm.

Arthur was architect for many important buildings such as, the additions to the North Infirmary, the Victoria Buildings, no.13 and 16 Patrick Street (both destroyed in 1920), the Cork Examiner Printing Works as well as many shops in Cork and the country towns, and designed numerous pretty villas in Cork and its hinterland. The science laboratories at University College, Cork, the Cork Technical Institute and the Munster and Leinster Bank were his chief works previous to the war. For many years he held the post of Lecturer on Architecture at the College.

To be continued…

Caption:

630a. Arthur Hill (source: Richard Hodges, 1911, Cork and County Cork in the Twentieth Century)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent,  23 February 2012

Technical Memories (Part 7)

The Matter of Arnott’s Brewery

When no positive outcome of funding came from Westminster, other means of raising income to fund a purpose built municipal technical institute in Cork City was considered. In May 1908, a national conference was held in Cork in association with the National Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction. This sparked the initiative that perhaps the Corporation of Cork could fund such a building.

The Cork technical instruction committee asked the Corporation of Cork to raise a loan of £18,500, on the security of municipal rates in order to construct a new science school. The Head Science Master, Mr. E.A. O’Keeffe, also suggested to the committee that if the Department’s annual development grant of £800 could be capitalised, it might be possible to erect a new technical institute from funds there as well. After consultation with the Department’s officials, this proposal was finally approved, within certain limits, on 8 March 1909.

In May 1908, the local government board sanctioned the appointed of Arthur Hill of Cork as architect for a new building. However, the architect had no site to work from. Difficulties were experienced by the committee in obtaining a suitable site, which were not overcome until early February 1909 when Arthur Frederick Crawford presented to the committee, a site in Fitton Street. It was previously occupied by Arnott’s Brewery, together with the old buildings then on the site.

Arnott’s Brewery began its life under Samuel Abbott in 1805. By 1858, the time George Waters took over the firm, the brewery made 600 barrels of ale per week. The brewery bought by Sir John Arnott in 1861. John was one of the city’s entrepreneurs and philanthropists. Born at Auchtermuchty, Fifeshire, Scotland, on 26 June 1814 and having spent his boyhood years in his native country, he came to Cork when about 21 years of age. He established many business concerns in almost all parts of the United Kingdom. They comprised drapery establishments, breweries, shipping companies and docks, and newspapers. Among the other businesses he started or was involved in included Cash and Company Cork, Baldoyle and Cork Race Park Meetings, the City of Cork Steamship Company, Passage Docks Shipbuilding Company, the Bristol General Steam Navigation Company and Arnott’s Brewery Cork.

For a considerable period of time, John Arnott occupied a prominent place in public life, in which he gained many honours. He was thrice elected Mayor of the City (1859, 1860 and 1861) by the Corporation of the time. There is a plaque on St Patrick’s Bridge in Cork that commemorates its opening by him on 12 December 1861.While Mayor, he was also elected to sit in Parliament for the town of Kinsale and spent five years at Westminster.

John Arnott was a philanthropist and was heavily involved in providing charity to the poor of the city. The journalist writing his obituary in the Southern Star of 2 April 1898 writes of him: “He always saw the cause and most liberally supported it…for instance – and it is only one of many-will he not be missed by the hundreds of poor people who annually, on Christmas Eve, made their way to Woodlands [his house], there to receive the contributions which Sir John invariably gave during the festive season”.

Linking his charitable side to Arnott’s Brewery (also became known as St Finbarr’s Brewery), in the Freeman’s Journal of 10 January 1862, it was noted:

“Sir John Arnott sometime since intimated his intention of carrying out a munificent system of relief to the poor of Cork, by undertaking upon a large scale the establishment of a bakery, a soup kitchen, and brewery…The soup kitchen is the first the visitor meets with entering these extensive premises…the kitchen itself is a square brick room, containing an immense boiler, opposite to which, at the other side of the apartment, are three large iron pans, capable of containing 150 gallons of soup each…to the rear of the kitchen is a very comfortable room for serving out the soup to the public. There are several wooden troughs in the yard, where all the vegetables are washed and cleansed before being sent into the kitchen and also a well aired room where the meat. The bakehouse alone will contain six enormous ovens, the largest, we understand ever introduced into this city”.

By 1876, the affect of the soup kitchen is unknown but the brewery was producing up to 50,000 barrels of stout per year. The brewery’s cooperage was situated on the opposite side of Fitton Street and the bottling stores adjoining the brewery. The Chamber of Commerce in its book Cork: Its Commerce and Trade in 1919 notes that Lady’s Well Brewery and the Murphys acquired the St Finbarr’s Brewery and Riverstown Ale Brewery and Maltings in 1901. They closed and dismantled both those breweries, but continued to work the malt houses. Arthur Sharman Crawford was a director of Messrs. Beamish and Crawford since its formation and had been earlier been a partner in the firm. For many years he was Chairman of the Cork Technical Instruction Committee. His offer of the brewery site was gratefully accepted by the committee.

To be continued…

Caption:

629a. Arnott’s Brewery, c.1900 (source: Crawford College of Art and Design)