Category Archives: Uncategorized

Blackrock Historical Walking Tour, Sunday 13 May 2012

As part of ongoing research project into the local history of the south-east ward, Cllr Kieran McCarthy will conduct a historical walking tour of Blackrock Village on Sunday 13 May 2012, 6.30pm, leaving from Blackrock Castle (approx 1 ½ hours, free event).

The earliest and official evidence for settlement in Blackrock dates to c.1564 when the Galway family created what was to become known as Dundanion Castle. Over 20 years later, Blackrock Castle was built circa 1582 by the citizens of Cork with artillery to resist pirates and other invaders. In the early 1700s, the prominent Tuckey family, of which Tuckey Street in the city centre is named, became part of the new social elite in Cork after the Williamite wars and built part of what became known in time at the Ursuline Convent. The building of the Navigation Wall or Dock in the 1760s turned focus to reclamation projects in the area and the eventual creation of public amenity land such as the Marina Walk during the time of the Great Famine. The early 1800s coincided with an enormous investment into creating new late Georgian mansions by many other key Cork families, such as the Chattertons, the Frends, the McMullers, Deanes and the Nash families, amongst others. Soon Blackrock was to have its own bathing houses, schools, hurling club, suburban railway line, and Protestant and Catholic Church. The pier that was developed at the heart of the space led to a number of other developments such as fisherman cottages and a fishing industry. This community is reflected in the 1911 census with 64 fisherman listed in Blackrock.

Cllr Kieran McCarthy noted: “A stroll in Blackrock is popular by many people, local and Cork people. The area is particularly characterised by beautiful architecture, historic landscapes and imposing late Georgian and early twentieth century country cottages; every structure points to a key era in Cork’s development. Blackrock is also lucky that many of its former residents have left archives, census records, diaries, old maps and insights into how the area developed, giving an insight into ways of life, ideas and ambitions in the past, some of which can help us in the present day in understanding Blackrock’s identity going forward.”


Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 19 April 2011

637a. Cookery Room, Crawford Municipal Technical Institute, Cork,1912

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 19 April 2012

Technical Memories (Part 13)

Playing a Piano Badly

 

“I am glad to be here …to bear testimony to the admirable work carried on under somewhat disadvantageous circumstances in the past and which will, doubtless, in the new circumstances greatly advance both as regards quantity and quality.” (Thomas Wallace Russell, Cork Examiner, Wednesday 17th January 1912)

In his wide ranging speech at the opening of the Crawford Technical Institute on Tuesday, 16 January 1912, Thomas Wallace Russell, Vice President of the Irish Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction took the opportunity to comment on the needs of industry of the day and gave his opinion on the role of women in the country.

Regarding the strengths of industrial education, Russell commented on all kinds of classes in the Cork institute. He shed light on the classes in mechanical engineering and physics – noting that Haulbowline and other places required students educated in those subjects; 

 “I have heard a good deal in the last year or two of different classes in Cork.  You have a tailoring class for example.  It has been difficult to satisfy the Department as to a teacher, but there is no lack of students. In that class men engaged in the tailoring industry receive valuable education, which tends to make them better tailors than they would be without it.  There are also classes in bootmaking and printing.  These may not be as successful as we could desire but they fulfil at least the primary function of technical education, and they have the strictest relationship to the industries of the district. It is not the function of technical education to make men tailors, bootmakers or printers.  It is its function to make a man a better tailor, a better bootmaker and a better printer than he would be otherwise.”

 

Russell also spoke about the domestic economy classes, which to him affected perhaps more closely the masses of the people than any other part of his department’s work.  Much he noted had been said and written on the question of higher education for women.  He gave his opinion that he did not have extensive sympathies with what he described as the “good deal of what is going on now in what is called the world of women”. To him the education of women as it was carried on opened up more than one “grave problem”. 

In the wider context of his speech, a year earlier in the United Kingdom had witnessed the first act of suffragette arson and two years later Emily Davison died at the Derby as she rushed out to bring down the King’s horse. In Parliament, pressure for change was led by some liberal MPs, who were the leading figures in a suffrage committee. Away from the reasoned debate of Westminster, prisons filled with women prepared to go to jail for the right to vote. The civil disobedience continued behind bars, with many women force-fed to prevent them hunger striking. Their families campaigned for the inmates to be given political status, including the right to wear their own clothes, study and prepare their own food.

            Noting his view of women in education in his Cork speech Russell argued:

“I am all for the higher education of women up to the point where that education can be of service to her.  If a young woman desires to become a teacher; if she desires to enter on a path of life where higher education is necessary; even if she can afford it – should she desire the wider outlook such an education will give her – I go fully with her aspirations.  But when I come to examine a country like Ireland where the great majority of the young women of the day, if they stay at home – and I am glad to know they are not leaving in such numbers – have a clear prospect before them of being the wives of farmers, shopkeepers and of labourers, the case to me is quite clear. 

 

In all such cases a diploma in domestic science will be of far more use than a degree in arts; and for the wife of a farmer, a shopkeeper or a workman, it will be inestimably better for her and better for Ireland, that she would know how to manage a family and to cook a potato well than to play a piano badly. And here comes in the importance of our domestic economy classes in these schools. They are not schools, as some people suppose, for the mere teaching of cooking.  They are schools for the making of good housewives.  They are schools where in addition to cooking, cleanliness and good order, hygiene, and sanitary science are taught and these are all vital interests of to-day.  It is in these directions that women can play a really great part in the present and in the future.”

 

By 1918, the Peoples Act allowed women over 30 the right to vote. It would take a further 10 years to abolish the age qualification and put men and women on an equal footing. In 1918 Russell retired from politics and died in May 1920, aged 79.

 

To be continued…

 

 

Caption:

 

637a. Cookery Room, Crawford Municipal Technical Institute, Cork 1912 (source: Souvenir 1912 booklet)

 

Kieran’s Comments, Marina Park & Rezoning, Cork City Council Meeting, 16 April 2012

Marina Park & Rezoning

Monday 16 April 2012

Lord Mayor,

The people here this evening have a right to be angry. Of all the pieces of docklands to change, it shouldn’t be the actual park that will benefit people’s lives if docklands comes into being.

Of all the aspects that this city needs more of …is public parks;

And since been here over the last three years, it is the last remaining green spaces of this city that have been before us again and again. We, as a city, won’t be happy, until we build or privatise every green site in the city. There have been at least a half a dozen proposals before us looking to rezone land.

As someone who is pro the development of recreational amenities and not the regression of such amenities across the city, it is sad to see the heart of the plan for the Marina Park here this evening being in a sense railroaded. Where I have no problem with the development of Pairc Uí Chaoimh, to create a second stadium-like structure does sever the heart of the Marina Park.

This report before us this evening also does not address the issues and concerns of the objectors in a meaningful way.

Given the level of objection to the proposed variation the report doesn’t even make an effort to broker a compromise solution that would resolve the objectors (all citizens and voters) concerns while working to achieve the objectives of the proposed variation.

One of the principal points the objectors highlight is the fact that the proposal changes public open space to a private sports ground. The manager’s report doesn’t even address this. The response is that it is ‘noted’. This ignores one of the main concerns of the residents.

The CPO for the showground purchase made a very strong point about the fact that the land was required for the Marina park and that this would be the only public sector project in the docklands. This would ‘anchor’ the area and create a sub-regional park (i.e. a park for the enjoyment of the whole southeast sector or cork including the county suburbs).

The resident’s strongly argue in their submissions that the manager’s report makes a mockery of the CPO proposals and undermines the docklands as a residential area by turning public open space into private playing fields.

That over 50% will become private property. Vehicle entry points, carparking spaces will blight the area. No consideration is given to the loss of amenity, comfort and recreational potential of the area.

Another key point that the residents groups in the area highlight is How you can achieve visual and physical linkage through the site, Pairc Ui Chaoimh and the centre of excellence, a major stadium and a minor one back to back.

Another strong argument the group make is they note the strong signal that the City Council and the manager are not interested in the voice and concerns of the citizens but instead put the interests of other private groups before those of the citizens.

These remarks and others are disheartening to hear and does show the disconnection in this context between the city planners and what the residents who have lived in this area need.

For the reasons I have outlined and others I am against the rezoning of land and will be voting no.

Ends

Kieran’s Motions and Question to the City Manager, Cork City Council Meeting, 16 April 2012

Kieran’s Motions and Question to the City Manager, Cork City Council Meeting, 16 April 2012

 

Question to the manager:

To ask the manager on the City Council’s stance on allowing wild animals to perform in circuses within the city bounds (Cllr Kieran McCarthy)

.

Motions:

To add Shrewsbury Estate on Ballinlough Road to the resurfacing estates list (Cllr Kieran McCarthy)

To get a report on the status of water pressure within estates on Douglas Road (Cllr Kieran McCarthy)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 12 April 2012

636a. Cork School of Commerce as pictured in 1919

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 12 April 2012

Technical Memories (Part 12)

Commercial Education in the City

In a wide ranging speech at the opening of the Crawford Technical Institute on Tuesday, 16 January 1912, Thomas Wallace Russell, Vice President of the Irish Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction Technical Education took the opportunity to comment on the politics of the day and the needs of education in the country.

Russell had been head of the latter Department since 1907. A year earlier in 1906 he was re-elected as an “Independent Unionist”, Tyrone South in the Westminster Parliament one of several candidates referred to as “Russellite Unionist”. He rejoined the Liberal Party and stood as a Liberal candidate at the general election in January 1910, when he lost his seat. Russell does not appear to have contested the December 1910 general election, but in 1911 he won a by-election in Tyrone North, a seat he held until the constituency was abolished in 1918.

In outlining what the new Crawford Technical Institute was building upon, Russell commented on the Cork School of Commerce;

“You have in the first place a School of Commerce connected with this institute. Now if technical education is to be worked on right lines then education ought to have some relation to the industries connected with the place where it is given. I think that it is a great matter for the people of Cork that they have this School of Commerce. You are to a very considerable extent a commercial city, and the youth of Cork if they are to remain here, must to a certain extent receive a commercial education and be educated along commercial lines. On every occasion on which I have visited Cork I have nothing but praise of your School of Commerce. …the education afforded as a complement to that given in the primary and other schools of the city cannot fail to improve the chances in life of those who attend the School.”

Consequent to the opening of the Crawford Technical College and the promotion of scientific subjects, commercial subjects were promoted in the city. Records show that in 1905-6 a total of 88 classes were given in science and commerce under the auspices of the Technical Instruction Committee. In a great Chamber of Commerce publication entitled Cork: Its Trade and Commerce (published in 1919), commercial classes began in Cork in 1908 at the Cork School of Commerce on Jameson Row on the South Mall and these were given to 550 students. The business methods department was particularly well equipped containing the latest “filling systems, duplicating apparatus, specimens of various types of looses leaf ledgers, and other examples of modern saving appliances”.

The typewriting section was well set up with a large number of machines. A special geography room was fitted up, containing maps of various kinds, including special railway and steamship maps, relief maps as well as a selection of charts, globes and show cases illustrating the various processes in different manufactures. The lectures were illustrated by means of a lantern and slides. In the modern languages department extensive use was made of the phonograph and illustrated charts. A select library was attached to the school for the use of the students. Lectures were delivered in the higher courses at the school were recognised by the renamed University College Cork (1908), hence enabling students of the school to obtain a university certificate in commerce.

Courses could be studied for four or five years and comprised: commercial arithmetic, book-keeping, accountancy, auditing, commerce including commercial practice, commercial English, salesmanship, insurance, banking and finance, railways, home and foreign trade, economics, French, German, Irish, Russian, Spanish, commercial geography, commercial and industrial law, company law, shorthand, typewriting, and manifolding (or carbon copying). Introductory course subjects were English, Mathematics and Drawing. In addition to the course of study above, the School arranged each term for a number of public lectures for the citizens.

The Crawford Technical Institute was to add the role of the Cork School of Commerce in the city. Commenting in his opening speech, Russell commented:

“ It is of importance to a young man who has made up his mind to be a clerk in a business house that he should be taught business methods, that he should understand two things in addition to the ordinary work of the office. He will be worth much more to his employer and to himself if he can write shorthand and if he can do typewriting. Both of these accomplishments are absolutely necessary in the business life of to-day – necessary in our commercial offices, necessary in our Government departments. What I would do without a staff of shorthand-writers and typewriters in the Department I do not know. One thing is certain – people would require to wait a good while for answers to their letters; they have been known to say they had to wait a good while as it is…Here, at all events, is one branch of your work which has a bearing upon the needs of the city – on its commercial life and in this respect at least it fulfils the conditions rightly imposed upon all technical education”.

To be continued…

Caption:

636a. Cork School of Commerce as pictured in 1919 on Jameson Row, South Mall (source: Cork: Its Trade and Commerce)

McCarthy’s Community Talent Competition 2012

Second call, auditions for the fourth year of McCarthy’s Community Talent Competition will take place on Sunday 29 April 2012, 11-5pm, Lifetime Lab. All talents are considered, open to primary and secondary school students, more information will be posted. Pictures from last year are at the link here, http://kieranmccarthy.ie/?p=6448

Auditions. McCarthy’s Community Talent Competition, 29 April 2012

First call, auditions for the fourth year of McCarthy’s Community Talent Competition will take place on Sunday 29 April 2012, 11-5pm, Lifetime Lab. All talents are considered, open to primary and secondary school students, more information will be posted. Pictures from last year are at the link here, http://kieranmccarthy.ie/?p=6448

Kieran’s Speech, Blackrock Community Association 2012 AGM

Kieran’s Speech, Blackrock Community Association AGM, 13 March 2012

 

Madame Chairperson, members of the committee

On the 1 October 1962, the Cork Examiner ran the following key headline,

“Kennedy’s troops mass for race war showdown”.

The first paragraph of the report read:

“The First US Federal marshals began arriving at Oxford (Mississippi) Airport yesterday to enforce court orders that a 29-year negro ex-serviceman be admitted to the all-white University of Mississippi. What began as the refusal of Mississippi officials to obey court orders to admit the negro, Mr. James Meredith into the university has grown into a full trial of strength between the US government and the southern state.

It is the most serious clash between the Government of and a state of the Union since the American civil War of a hundred years ago. From various neighbouring segregationalist states have come pledges of support totalling ‘tens of thousands’ of volunteers to assist Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett.”

Many students harassed Meredith during his two semesters on campus but others accepted him. According to first-person accounts, students living in Meredith’s dorm bounced basketballs on the floor just above his room through all hours of the night. Other students ostracized him: when Meredith walked into the cafeteria for meals, the students eating would turn their backs. If Meredith sat at a table with other students, all of whom were white, the students would immediately get up and go to another table.

On the same page, another headline ran “All set for US Space Flight”.

“A huge task force of ships, aircraft and men were assembling throughout the world yesterday in preparation for Walter Schirra’s six-orbit space flight due to be launched at Cape Canaveral, Florida on Wednesday. If the flight goes off to plan, Commander Schirra will become America’s fifth spaceman and holder of the US long-distance space record.“

On October 3, 1962, Schirra became the fifth American in space, piloting a rocket on a six-orbit mission lasting 9 hours, 13 minutes, and 11 seconds. The capsule attained a velocity of 17,557 miles per hour (28,255 km/h) and an altitude of 175 statute miles (282 km), and landed within 4 miles (6.4 km) of the main Pacific Ocean recovery ship.

If anything, the 1 October 1962 showed a world of change from questions of equality to questions of ambition – new foundations of change swept across society yet again.

In headlines that showed but a weariness of change and an excitement of discovery, the headlines indirectly point out that nothing remains the same and the world keeps turning.

Caught between the main headline “US Crisis Nears Climax and “All Set for US Space Flight” was a more local story that read “Laid Foundation Stone”.

Beneath a central picture, the caption read;

“His Lordship Most Rev. Dr. Lucey, Bishop of Cork and Ross, laying the foundation stone of the new parish church of St Michael the Archangel at Blackrock, Cork. The new building will replace that destroyed by fire about eight months ago.”

On page 7 inside, a headline ran, “Redoubled Effort urged for new Cork Church”.

In a statement after the ceremony, Bishop Lucey said that:

“The blessing at Blackrock like the burning was something to remember….it is only just eight months since the old church was destroyed. In a matter almost of days the site was being cleared and plans for the new church drafted, the money for the building was being collected within and without the parish…we have a good architect for it in Mr. Boyd Barrett and I am satisfied that in line and design it will be beautiful”.

Cork’s Fold Magazine in April 1962 noted of the church:

“It had been one of the most distinguished and attractive churches in Cork for more than 130 years since 1819. It had acquired an atmosphere of intimacy and continuous devotion, which appealed greatly to visitors, as well as to the large local congregation, who have become much more numerous than its founders had ever foreseen. Its total destruction in broad daylight, within an hour of the outbreak of the fire, was a disaster that could not have been imagined. In fact the sudden conflagration quickly filled the church with such dense smoke that the firemen could not operate inside. Their efforts to play water on the roof were unavailing until it had collapsed into a blazing furnace.”


Burning of St Michael's Church, Blackrock, 1962

 

Walking around the present St Michael’s it is a beautiful building.

I like the location of the church, the way it seems to be nestled into a wooded area as seen from Montenotte.

Its high spire is reminiscent of an earlier age of architecture reaching for the heavens but also reminiscent of the new age of space rockets and reaching out beyond technology.

The lofty and colourful stained glass windows, which cast beautiful colours across the church perhaps remind one of the importance of colour.

I like the beautiful carved altar and its craftsmanship.

The location, its reaching for something higher, its colour and craftsmanship have transcended time to our time.

The church is soulful and purposeful – something motivating and ambitious. Something that has a voice. For the visitor, regular who sits on the same pew every Sunday, explorer, or geographer like me, this human built fabric creates a sacred landscape of encounters, experiences, connections, journeys, ideas and re-interpretations.

The story of this church shows us much – talent, confidence, self pride, self belief and innovation. And ladies and gentlemen, in the Ireland of today, we need more of such confidence, pride and belief and innovation– we need to mass produce these qualities and step by step approaches to pursue them.

And perhaps the idea of community is a process more than something static

But certainly the process becomes positively charged when the metronome of time veers from the weariness of change to the excitement of discovery.

I wish to congratulate you on the year gone by and your efforts and endeavours in that time. I would like to thank you for your courtesy and welcome shown to me at the summer céilí, which were great craic. Indeed anytime I appear in this community haven, I am challenged to either speak or sing or both…

I would also like to thank the people of Blackrock for their interest and support in my own community projects, the enterprise workshops, artist residency programme, the community talent competition, the make a model boat project on the Atlantic Pod, the Design A Public Park, Art Competition and the walking tour down the old Rail line, which is also now in lecture form.

My new walking tour of Blackrock I have set May leaving from Blackrock Castle and exploring the myriad of memories in this area from the 400 year castle to the fishing village, the Victorian houses, the two churches, the graveyard to name just a few.

Best of luck in the year ahead,

Go Raibh Maith Agaibh

 

Present Day St. Michael's Roman Catholic Church Blackrock

Interior of the nineteenth century St. Michael's Church, Blackrock

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 5 April 2012

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 5 April 2012

Technical Memories (Part 11)

The Politics of Speechmaking


635a. Caricature portrait of Thomas Wallace RussellOn Tuesday, 16 January 1912, the official opening of Crawford Municipal Technical Institute took place with an official address by Thomas Wallace Russell, Vice –President, Department of Agricultural and Technical Instruction. Covering the event, the Cork Examiner outlines that Russell opened his speech praising the Cork initiative and the splendid educational building.

Thomas Wallace Russell referred to the principal Dr. John Grindley as a capable and ‘supremely’ able headmaster, and the youth of Cork as a ‘constituency’ upon which he and his staff could operate without difficulty and with ‘inestimable advantage’. Speaking generally, he spoke about the progress of technical education in Ireland noting that: “ten years ago there were probably no more than a dozen technical schools. Today there are many. What is really a new profession has sprung up in the country”.

Russell continued that technical education had not only progressed in great cities such as Dublin, Belfast and Cork but also in the many villages where there were classes in which valuable technical instruction was being imparted. Russell argued that: “This is comparatively unexciting work. It does not always bulk largely in public estimation. Sometimes it is even challenged but I rejoice to know that it is going forward everyday and it is limited only by the money we are enabled to spend on it”.

Russell went on to remark that Cork occupied a great position with regard to technical education. He noted that the new building was erected without aid from any building grant supplied by the Treasury. He debates that he did his best to press its urgency on the Chancellor of the Exchequer some time previously, when there was a chance of something been done. Indeed he argued that there was merit in the importance of making such grants but that the financial questions between England and Ireland were being considered at the moment by a Committee advisory of the Cabinet. They sought to create grant schemes between the two countries but this depended on a settlement of the question of Irish Home Rule.

Indeed in Russell’s speech, there are many references to a changing political climate. By January 1912, moves were afoot by Irish parliamentary party members to press again for Irish Home Rule and the repeal of the Act of Union of 1800 by a demand for self-government within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. For almost half a century – from the early 1870s to the end of World War I – Home Rule was both the single most dominant feature of Irish political life and a major influence within British politics. After the second 1910 general election when the nationalist Irish Parliamentary Party under its leader John Redmond held the balance of power in the House of Commons, the Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith came to an understanding with Redmond, that if he supported his move to break the power of the Lords in order to have the finance bill passed, Asquith would then in return introduce a new Home Rule Bill. Plans by early 1912 were in operation to present that bill to the Home Rule movement in Northern Ireland. On 8 February 1912, the First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill addressed a pro Home Rule meeting in Belfast despite Ulster Unionist attempts to prevent him speaking. Churchill shared the platform with John Redmond.

Even the character and career of Thomas Wallace Russell, in a sense, represented the political changes and perhaps strategies and compromises that had occurred in Ireland in the sixty years prior to 1912. His career is outlined in various obituaries in Irish newspapers in early May 1920 such as the Anglo Celt. Born at Fife, Scotland, by the age of 10 he was apprenticed to the grocery trade and was largely a self educated and self made individual. At the age of eighteen Thomas he secured employment as an assistant in the soap works of David Brown and Son and moved to Donaghmore County Tyrone. Taking an interest in local affairs, he helped start a Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Association there. By 1869, he had moved to Dublin as secretary and parliamentary agent of the Irish temperance movement and became well-known as an anti-alcohol campaigner and proprietor of a Temperance Hotel in Dublin.

Russell unsuccessfully contested a seat for Preston, England in 1885 as a Liberal. However, he opposed William Ewart Gladstone’s Home Rule policy and was elected to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland as a Liberal Unionist in 1886. He served between 1895 and 1900 as Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Board in the Unionist administration of Lord Salisbury. However, by the turn of the century Russell became more critical of Unionist policies in Ireland. His views on Home Rule underwent a change. From 1900 he was head of the Farmers and Labourers Union, an Ulster tenant-farmer protest movement demanding compulsory land purchase, similar to the land and labour movement in the south. His 1901 book Ireland and the Empire was an attack on the Irish agrarian system. In 1907, he became vice-president of the Irish Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction.

To be continued…

Caption:

635a. Caricature portrait of Thomas Wallace Russell (source: Vanity Fair, 24 March 1888)