Category Archives: Uncategorized

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

Cork History, Uncategorized

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

Arts, Cork City Events, Improve Your Life, Kieran's Council Work, S.E. Ward Local History, Uncategorized, Ward Events

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

Arts, Cork City Events, Improve Your Life, Kieran's Council Work, Uncategorized, Ward Events

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

Cork City Events, Cork History, Kieran's Council Work, Landscapes, S.E. Ward Local History, Uncategorized, Ward Events

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

Cork History, Uncategorized

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)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 29 March 2012, Discover Cork: Schools’ Heritage Project 2012

Cork City Events, Cork History, Uncategorized

634a Selection of teachers and students

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent,  29 March 2012

Discover Cork: Schools’ Heritage Project 2012

 

This year marks the tenth year of the Discover Cork: Schools’ Heritage Project co-ordinated by myself. The Project for 2012 culminated recently in two award ceremonies for the project. It  is open to schools in Cork City and County- at primary level to the pupils of fourth, fifth and sixth class and at post-primary from first to sixth years. A total of 48 schools in Cork took part this year. Circa 1200 students participated in the process and approx 200 projects were submitted on all aspects of Cork’s history.

One of the key aims of the project is to allow students to explore, investigate and comment on their local history in a constructive, active and fun way. The emphasis is on the process of doing a project and learning not only about your area but also developing new personal skills. Students are challenged to devise methodologies that provide interesting ways to approach the study of their local history.

Submitted projects must be colourful, creative, have personal opinion, imagination and gain publicity. These elements form the basis of a student friendly narrative analysis approach where the students explore their project topic in an interactive way. In particular students are encouraged to attain primary material generating primary material through engaging with a number of methods such as fieldwork, interviews with local people, making models, photographing, cartoon creating, making DVDs of their area.

Students are to experiment with the overall design and plan of their projects. It attempts to bring the student to become more personal and creative in their approaches. Much of the work could be published as local heritage / history guides to people and places in the County.  For example a winning class project this year focussed on the history of the city centre and mapped out their favourite shops and those older shops around them, thus connecting the past and present. 

This year marks went towards making a short film or a model on projects to accompany history booklets. Submitted DVDs this year had interviews of family members to local historians to the student taking a reporter type stance on their work. Some students also chose to act out scenes from the past. A class in the city this year chose to use the style of British Pathé films and act out a scene from the War of Independence in their area and the consequences. Another group filmed moving lego characters to show a raid on a ringfort whilst others created a rap on why archaeology is important to society.

The creativity section also encourages model making. The best model trophy in general goes to the creative and realistic model. This year the best model in the city went to a set of models from Scoil Mhuire Banríon in Mayfield, which complemented their creative booklets. Indeed models of the Titanic featured this year in several projects. In the county, the top model prize went to a student who re-created the Béal the Bláth memorial with other students creating models of churches and castles as well.

Students are encouraged to compare and connect the past to their present and their immediate future. Work needs to involve re-imagining what life may have been like. One of the key foundations in the Project is about developing empathy for the past– to think about attitudes and experience in the past. Interpretation is also empowering for the student- all the time developing a better sense of the different ways in which people engage with and express a sense of place and time.

Every year, the students involved produce a section in their project books showing how they communicated their work to the wider community. It is about reaching out and gaining public praise for the student but also appraisal and further ideas. This year the most prominent source of gaining publicity was inviting parents into the classroom for an open day for viewing projects or putting displays on in local community centres and libraries. Some class projects were presented in nursing homes to engage the older generation and to attain further memories from participants. Students were also successful in putting work on local parish newsletters, newspapers and local radio stations and also presenting work in local libraries. 

Overall, the Discover Cork: Schools’ Heritage Project attempts to provide the student with a hands-on and interactive activity that is all about learning not only about your local area but also about the process of learning by participating students. The project in the city is kindly funded by Cork Civic Trust (viz the help of John X. Miller), Cork City Council (viz the help of Niamh Twomey), the Heritage Council and the Evening Echo. Prizes were also provided in the 2012 season by Lifetime Lab, Lee Road (thanks to Meryvn Horgan), Sean Kelly of Lucky Meadows Equestrian Centre Watergrasshill and Cork City Gaol Heritage Centre. The county section is funded by myself and students. A full list of winners, topics and pictures of some of the project pages for 2012 can be viewed at www.corkheritage.ie and on facebook on Cork: Our City, Our Town.

Back to the Crawford Municipal Technical Institute next week…

 

Caption:

634a. Selection of teachers and students involved in the City Edition of the Discover Cork: Schools’ Heritage Project at the recent award ceremony in Silversprings Convention Centre, Cork (picture: Yvonne Coughlan)

Kieran’s Motions and Question to the City Manager, Cork City Council Meeting, 26 March 2011

Uncategorized

Question to the Manager: 

To ask the manager, arising from the appointment of consultants in early 2012 under the September 2010 competition for the Cork Docklands Marina Park Landscape Design, are the planners currently only considering the landscape design option that includes the disposal of the lands to the GAA. Or both? (Cllr Kieran McCarthy)

 

Motions:

 

To install a footpath ramp for wheelchairs on the footpath at the top of Knockrea Avenue, where it joins the Ballinlough Road opposite the bus stop (Cllr Kieran McCarthy)

To add Whitethorn Estate, Douglas Road to the resurfacing estates list (Cllr Kieran McCarthy)

Cork City Hall Foyer

Douglas Historical Walking Tour, 24 March 2012

Cork City Events, Cork History, Kieran's Council Work, S.E. Ward Local History, Uncategorized, Ward Events

Thanks to everyone who supported the historical walking tour of Douglas today and for your contributions. It will be run again in the near future.

Historical walking tour of Douglas with Cllr Kieran McCarthy, 24 March 2012

Did you Know?

·  The district of Douglas takes its names from the river or rivulet bearing the Gaelic word Dubhghlas or dark stream.

· In an inquisition of the lands of Gerald de Prendergast in 1251, Douglas is first mentioned. In 1299, Douglas was one of the towns listed in County Cork, where the King’s proclamation was to be read out.

· In 1372, in an inspection of the dower of Johanna, widow of John de Rocheford, there is a reference to allotments of land to her in Douglas. The Roches originally came from Flanders, then emigrated to Pembrokeshire in Wales, before three of the family – David, Adam and Henry de la Roch – joined Strongbow in the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland in the 12th century. In all there are sixteen Rochestowns in Ireland and innumerable Roche castles.

· In 1586, the townlands in Douglas that are mentioned are “Cosdusser (south of Castle Treasure house), Castle Treasure, Ardarige and Gransaghe”.

· On the 1st June 1726, Douglas Factory was begun to be built. Samuel Perry and Francis Carleton were the first proprietors. They were also members of the Corporation of Cork.

· The 18th century was the last golden age for wooden sailing ships, before the 1800s made steam and iron prerequisites for modern navies and trading fleets.  It was a golden age too for maritime exploration, with the voyages of James Cook amongst others opening up the Pacific and the South Seas.

· Robert Stephenson, technical expert on linen industry, who visited every linen factory in Munster, Leinster and Connaught on behalf of the linen board visited Cork on 9 August 1755: “Near this city and in it are carried on the only sail cloth manufacturers worth notice at present in the Kingdom; Douglas Factory, the property of Messrs. Perry, Carelton and Co. contains about 100 looms, with Boylers, Cesterns, Kieves and every apparatus for preparing the Yarn to that Number”

· On the 21st July 1784, “the Corporation of Cork granted £50 to Messrs. John Shaw (Sailcloth manufacturer), Jasper Lucas (gentlemen), Aylmer Allen (merchant) and Julius Besnard towards the new church now erecting at Douglas, provided that, a seat shall be erected in said Church for the use of the Corporation.”

· In 1863, Wallis and Pollock’s Douglas Patent Hemp Spinning Company were the largest ropeworks in the south of Ireland, which had been established within the former Douglas sailcloth factory, erected scotching machinery.

· The surviving multi-storey flax-spinning mill at Donnybrook was designed and built by the Cork architect and antiquarian, Richard Bolt Brash, for Hugh and James Wheeler Pollock in 1866. It’s essential design, like that of the Millfield flaz-spinning mill, was modelled closely on contemporary Belfast mills.

· In 1889, the mill was bought by James and Patrick Morrough and R.A. Atkins, the High Sheriff of Cork. In 1903, the mill employed 300 people, many of whom were housed in the 100 company-owned cottages in Douglas.

· In 1883, the O’Brien Brothers built St. Patrick’s Mills in Douglas Village. It was designed by a Glasgow architect.

· O’Brien’s Mills were extended in the closing decades of the nineteenth century, and by 1903 it operated with some 80 looms and employed 300 workers, many of whom lived in company-owned houses in Douglas village.

· In 1837, there were 40 or so seats or mansions and demesnes in the environs of Douglas, which made it a place where the city’s merchants made their home and also these suburban spaces make for an interesting place to study in terms of ambition. Those landscapes that were created still linger in the environs of Douglas Village.

Historical walking tour of Douglas with Cllr Kieran McCarthy, March 2012

Historical walking tour of Douglas with Cllr Kieran McCarthy, March 2012

Historical walking tour of Douglas with Cllr Kieran McCarthy, March 2012

Douglas, as per Guy's Directory of Cork, 1875

Kieran’s Lifelong Learning Festival Events 2012, Our City, Our Town Article, 22 March 2012

Cork City Events, Cork History, S.E. Ward Local History, Uncategorized, Ward Events

633a-douglas-village-by-william-lawrence1

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 22 March 2012

Kieran’s Events, Lifelong Learning Festival

 

Next week coincides with the advent of the Cork Lifelong Learning festival during which a myriad of events will take place showcasing the importance of community spirit and education within the city. The motto of the festival, “investigate, participate and celebrate” are strong verbs to describe the festival as a feast of learning opportunities. I have two events taking place. The first presents a historical walking tour of Douglas village, and the second is a lecture on Cork in the 1920s and 1930s (Wednesday, 28 March, 10.30am, Curraheen Family Centre meeting room, Church of the Real Presence, Curraheen Road).

The Douglas Village walking tour, in association with Young at Heart, starts at 2pm, Saturday, 24 March, at St. Columba’s Church carpark and takes a circular tour around the village talking about seven or eight sites of heritage that offer an insight into how the village developed. The District of Douglas takes its names from the river or rivulet bearing the Gaelic word Dubhghlas or dark stream. As early as the late thirteenth century King John of England made a grant of parcels of land, near the city of Cork to Philip de Prendergast.  On 1 June 1726, the Douglas Sailcloth Factory is said to have been founded by a colony of weavers from Fermanagh. The eighteenth century was a golden age for wooden sailing ships, before the 1800s made steam and iron prerequisites for modern navies and trading fleets.  The era was also a golden age too for maritime exploration, with the voyages of James Cook amongst others opening up the Pacific and the South Seas. Douglas in its own way added in part to this world of exploration.

Douglas Village is lucky that it has been written about in depth by local historians in the 1980s and 1990s, scholars such as Con Foley and Walter McGrath, both of whom shone a huge spotlight on the depth and range of material available. Con Foley’s book on the history of Douglas shows his love of place and his participation in sitting down for years, penning notes, walking the ground, using ordnance survey maps and pondering on and mapping interconnections between the different memories of families active in the village and environs through time.

In subsequent editions of his work, Con Foley presents two evocative photos on the front and back cover of his book. The first, an image from the William Lawrence Photographic Collection, presents East Douglas Street and a tram departing or stopping at the scene (remembered in the nearby Tramway Terrace) where the old street surface or gravel and mud can be clearly seen and an absence of traffic. The second image shows a hunt beginning at the Fingerpost. The picture shows a stoutly built wooden road sign, of a type rarely seen nowadays, it stood at the junction of the Maryborough and Rochestown Road. Embedded in a beehive shaped pile of stone, it is about fifteen feet high, including the base. Apart from its value as a road sign, it was of some local historical significance. A local man, Phil Carty of Donnybrook, is said to have been hanged on the original Finger Post for his part in the 1798 Rebellion and his corpse left dangling in chains there. For many decades subsequently, men passing by would raise their caps and bless themselves.

The Lawrence Collection now appears more or less in full on the National Library’s website (www.nli.ie) under catalogues and databases. The man who took all the photographs, other than studio portraits, for the firm of William Lawrence from the late 1870s to 1914 was Dublin man Robert French. He took at least 40,000 photographs over approximately 30 years. During that time railways criss-crossed the land. Irish cities in particular were being transformed. Public transport was being introduced. Dublin, Cork and Belfast were expanding rapidly. Whole new suburbs were built. Indeed, the story of Douglas and its environs seems to be in part a story of experimentation, of industry and of people and social improvement; the story of one of Ireland’s largest sailcloth factories is a worthwhile topic to explore in terms of its aspirations in the eighteenth century;  that coupled with the creation of 40 or so seats or mansions and demesnes made it a place where the city’s merchants made their home it and also these suburban spaces make for an interesting place to study in terms of ambition. Those landscapes that were created still linger in the environs of Douglas Village.

My interest in local history tries to present the human experience involved in creating it, and those visible and invisible qualities of a sense of place and identity, and how they are constructed. Indeed, apart from the data of the nineteenth century and previous ones, residents and visitors to the present area are constantly changing the memories associated with the place. Indeed, a key aspect of giving any talk is the wealth of information in front of you in the room. Those in the audience are as important as those in the past in aiding the process of investigating, participating and celebrating local history.

To be continued…

Captions:

633a. Photograph of Douglas Village, c.1900 by William Lawrence (source: National Library of Ireland)