Category Archives: Landscapes

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article, Heritage Week, 21 August 2014

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

756a. Painting a future, Members of Mayfield Community Arts in Bishop Lucey Park, 22 June 2012

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 21 August 2014

Heritage Week, 23-31 August – Carved from a Swamp

 

Cork Heritage Open Day and Heritage Week are looming – a kind of Christmas week – for a heritage fanatic like me. It is great to see the city’s local history and natural heritage being focussed on. Indeed as a city, we need to celebrate it more publicly and more regularly. This city’s growth on a swamp is in itself a story on which a whole series of talks and walks can be based. I am always in awe at the geologists’ reports on beneath this urban space – that below the swamp are multiple tree stumps of a broken down forest flooded out through sea level rise from over 20,000 years ago. The city’s buildings continue to sink into this space -20,000 years in the making – with each generation struggling to carve its own ‘safe harbour’. 

This city is built on a shift-shaping landscape – sand and gravel, rushes and reeds – a wetland knitted together to create a working port through the ages. It is also the multi-faceted narratives that knit this place together. Standing in Bishop Lucey Park, for example, are multiple monuments – remnants of the blocks of the town walls, the arches for the old Corn Market gates (once behind City Hall), the smiling shawlie within Seamus Murphy’s statue, and the swans of the fountain representing Cork 800. The fountain was placed there in 1985, a nod to the city’s celebration of  800 years since the city’s first charter in 1185. Then there is the imposing sinking tower of Christ Church and its ruinous graveyard to the ghostly feel of the buildings that once stood at the park’s entrance. Along the latter stretch, living memory has recorded Jennings furniture shop, destroyed by fire in 1970; the toy shop of Percy Diamond who was cantor (a singer of liturgical music) at the Jewish synagogue; and the Fountain Café over which the famous hurler Christy Ring had a flat for a time. Of course when I mention just these strands, there are other layers I have not mentioned. The layered memories at times and their fleshed out contexts are endless and often seem timeless.

The presence of all these monuments in the Park often play with my own mind on every walking tour – there is so much one can show and say. These urban spaces seem to slide between the past and present, between material and symbolic worlds. The mural by Mayfield Community Arts on the gable end of the shop next door to the park, entitled “connecting our imagination, how do we imagine a positive future” is apt. The past does play on the imagination; it interconnects between spaces and times into our present and future. It creates at many times, when studying this city, partial memories that the scholar can only reconstruct in part and tentatively in the mind. Memories flow and bend across the story of the development of this North Atlantic big hearted small city.

The kept town walls are a space as a city we need to keep even better. Sometimes we don’t mind these spaces enough. The green rusty plaque on it indicates its age of thirteenth century. During its excavation shards of pottery from Normandy, from the Saintonge region of France, from England, and from other parts of Ireland were also found during the excavation of the wall. For nearly 500 years (1170s to 1690), the town wall symbolised the urbanity of Cork and gave its citizens an identity within the town itself. The walls served as a vast repository of symbolism, iconography and ideology, as symbols of order and social relationships. Indeed the same can be said of all the buildings and spaces the public learn about on this Saturday and next week across talks and walks.

The former town walls like this city were rebuilt in parts by inhabitants through hundreds of years. The river and the tide eroded at their base taking away the various sandstone and limestone blocks and perhaps re-shaping the more resistant ones. The surviving section in Bishop Lucey Park invites the visitor to reflect on life and resistance within the town and how layered the city’s story is. There is wear and tear on the stones presented, which cross from the era of the walled town to the modern city. It invokes the imagination and if anything the wear and tear on our built heritage allows our minds to wonder and reflect about the life and times of people of the past and offers us ideas to take into our future world.  

–          Cork Heritage Open Day, 23 August, www.corkheritageopenday.ie

–          Kieran’s tours for heritage week:

·         Sunday 24 August 2014 – Eighteenth century Cork historical walking tour, Branding a City-Making a Venice of the North, with Kieran; meet at City Library, Grand Parade, 7pm (free, duration: two hours).

·         Monday 25 August 2014 – Shandon Historical Walking Tour with Kieran, meet at North Gate Bridge, 7pm (free, duration: two hours).

·         Tuesday 26 August 2014 – Blackpool Historical Walking Tour with Kieran, meet at the North Mon gates, Gerald Griffin Avenue, 7pm (free, duration: two hours).

·         Thursday 28 August 2014 – Docklands Historical Walking Tour with Kieran, meet at Kennedy Park, Victoria Road, 7pm (free, duration: two hours).

·         Saturday 30 August 2014,  Douglas Historical Walking Tour with Kieran, meet at St. Columba’s Church Car Park, Douglas, 2pm (free, duration: two hours).

Caption:

756a. Painting a future; members of Mayfield Community Arts in Bishop Lucey Park, 22 June 2012 (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 14 August 2014

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

755a. Shandon silhouetted through a recent sunset

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 14 August 2014

Kieran’s Heritage Week, 23-31 August 2014

 

National Heritage Week is upon us again at the end of next week (23 – 31 August). It’s going to be a busy week. In the city and county, there is a wide range of events on. The City Library has an extensive local history lecture programme. I will post all events on my facebook page, Cork: Our City, Our Town. I have set up a number of events. They are all free and I welcome any public support for the activities outlined below.

 

Kieran’s Heritage Week, 23-30 August 2014

 

Heritage Open Day:

 

Saturday 23 August 2014 – Historical Walking Tour of City Hall with Kieran; Learn about the early history of Cork City Hall and Cork City Council, Discover the development of the building and visit the Lord Mayor’s Room, 11am, ticketed (free, duration: 75 minutes). The current structure, replaced the old City Hall, which was destroyed in the ‘burning of Cork’ in 1920. It was designed by Architects Jones and Kelly and built by the Cork Company Sisks. The foundation stone was laid by Eamonn de Valera, President of the Executive Council of the State on 9 July 1932. For more on Cork Heritage Open Day, check out www.corkheritageopenday.ie

 

Kieran’s Heritage Week, 24-31 August 2014:

 

Sunday 24 August 2014 – Eighteenth century Cork historical walking tour, Branding a City-Making a Venice of the North, with Kieran; meet at City Library, Grand Parade, 7pm (free, duration: two hours).

 For nearly five hundred years (c.1200-c.1690), the walled port town of Cork, built in a swamp and at the lowest crossing point of the River Lee and the tidal area, remained as one of the most fortified and vibrant walled settlements in the expanding British colonial empire. The walls served as a vast repository of meanings, symbolism, iconography and ideology, as well as symbols of order and social relationships. However, economic growth as well as political events in late seventeenth century Ireland, culminating in the destruction of the city’s core in 1690, provided the catalyst for large-scale change within the urban area. The walls were allowed to decay and this was to inadvertently alter much of the city’s physical, social and economic character in the ensuing century. By John Rocque’s Map of Cork in 1759, the walls of Cork were just a memory- the medieval plan was now a small part in something larger – larger in terms of population from 20,000 to 73,000 plus in terms of a new townscape. A new urban text emerged with new bridges, streets, quays, residences and warehouses built to intertwine with the natural riverine landscape. New communities created new social and cultural landscapes to encounter, several of which are explored on my tours for this year’s heritage week.

 

Monday 25 August 2014 – Shandon Historical Walking Tour  with Kieran, Discover the City’s historical quarter; learn about St Anne’s Church and the development of the butter market and the Shandon Street area; meet at North Gate Bridge, 7pm (free, duration: two hours).

There are multiple layers of history around the Shandon quarter. Amongst them is the story of the great butter market. By the mid 1700s, the native butter industry in Cork had grown to such an extent due to British empire expansion that it was decided among the main city and county butter merchants that an institution be established in the city that would control and develop its potential. These ‘Committee of Butter Merchants’ located themselves in a simple commissioned building adjacent to Shandon. The committee comprised 21 members who were chosen by the merchants in the city.  In May 1770, it was decided by the Cork Committee that all butter to be exported from Cork was to be examined by appointed inspectors who had two main duties to perform. Firstly, they had to examine and determine the quality and weight of the butter. Secondly, they had to examine and report on the manner of packing and to detect and signs of fraud. 

 

Tuesday 26 August 2014- Blackpool Historical Walking Tour with Kieran, From Fair Hill to the heart of Blackpool, learn about nineteenth century shambles, schools, convents and industries, meet at the North Mon gates, Gerald Griffin Avenue, 7pm (free, duration: two hours).

The walking tour weaves its way from the North Mon into Blackpool, Shandon and Gurranbraher highlighting nineteenth century life in this corner of Cork from education to housing to politics, to religion, to industry and to social life itself. Blackpool was the scene of industry in Cork in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for industries such as tanning through big names such as Dunn’s Tannery and distilling through families such as the Hewitts. The leather industry at one vibrant in Blackpool with no fewer than 46 tanyards at work there in 1837 giving employment to over 700 hands and tanning on average 110,000 hides annually.

 

Kieran’s other walking tours include:

Thursday 28 August 2014 – Docklands Historical Walking Tour with Cllr Kieran McCarthy, Discover the history of the city’s docks, meet at Kennedy Park, Victoria Road, 7pm (free, duration: two hours).

 

Saturday 30 August 2014,  Douglas Historical Walking Tour with Cllr Kieran McCarthy, Discover about the sailcoth and woollen mills, meet at St. Columba’s Church Car Park, Douglas, 2pm (free, duration: two hours).

 

Captions:

 

755a. Shandon silhouetted through a recent sunset (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 7 August 2014

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

754a. Advertisement for Dunlops tyres, 1960s

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent,  7 August 2014

“Technical Memories (Part 85) –Plans for Modernisation”

 

In 1934, the Irish Dunlop Company commenced manufacture in Ireland at its factory at Centre Park Road, held under a lease from Henry Ford & Son.  Under a State manufacture licence, the company was to provide at least eighty per cent in quantity of the country’s requirements of pneumatic rubber tyres.

In a Dáil Éireann debate in mid June 1935, Seán Lemass moved the adoption of a quota order, which prohibited the importation of motor tyres and tubes except under licence. During a debate he noted that the Dunlop Co had been informed that it would be the policy of the Government to refuse a licence to any other external company to manufacture in the country any class of goods, which were being produced by that firm in their factory in Cork. Dunlops would have to produce in sufficient quantities of satisfactory quality and at reasonable prices.

Snippets of social history from this time include the foundation for its famous social club or at this time its Athletic Club set up at the works in late 1936. In December of that year, at the Novices’ Cross-Country Championship at Bandon, the club was represented by eight competitors. W A Nestor, a county and Munster sprint champion had joined the workforce in 1936 as well as prominent athlete, Florrie O’Mahony from Ballydehob. Florrie’s brother was Danno who won the NWA World title from Jim Londos in Boston on 30 June 1935, and was known as the “Irish Whip” in celebration of his famous throwing technique. He was also a champion hammer-thrower and a statue of Danno today exists in the heart of Ballydehob.

At the outbreak of World War II, the Dunlop company was producing virtually all types of pneumatic tyres, a complete range of rubber footwear, rubber soles and heels, rubber hot water bottles, golf balls, tennis balls and sundry other articles manufactured with rubber – the output was deemed at a level sufficient to meet the requirements of the home market. However War created a shortage of raw materials and forced the company to concentrate on the production of tyres to the virtual exclusion of other goods. In the Irish Press on 21 November 1941 (p2) the journalist wrote that the Irish Dunlop Company Ltd was appointed official agents by the government for disposal of all grades of salvage rubber. It was illegal to dispose of salvage rubber otherwise than to the government’s authorised agents. Cash payments were to made on the spot who had rubber.

By April 1947, the company entered into a contract to purchase from Messrs Henry Ford & Son Ltd for £260,000 its factory at Marina Cork. It was initially held under a lease, which was due to expire. The then factory was deemed a modern building, containing nearly 200,000 square feet of floor space, fronting upon a deep water berth on the River Lee (Irish Independent, 17 April 1947, p.7). To meet the purchase price and to provide for the cost of extensions onto adjoining ground, and new equipment, a sum of approximately £450,000 was required. The sum of £330,700 was raised through an increase in the company’s issues share capital of 100,000 ordinary shares. Preference shares to existing shareholders and first mortgage debenture stock were to provide the rest of the funding required.

Fast forward to the 1960s and many Irish households and Irish industrial and commercial projects were dependent on Dunlop to a large or minor extent. An article in the Irish Press by journalist Liam Flynn on 23 April 1962 (p.9) reminded readers that the company produced 35,000 golf balls a year and tennis balls were coming onto the market from Cork at the rate of 6,000 dozen a year. Footwear had leaped from 730,000 pairs in 1936 to 1,500,000 pairs in 1961. Although Dunlop supplied the entire country, the output far exceeded the demands and consequently there was a solid export market engineered through their worldwide organisation. Many countries in the world used some Cork products including large markets in Britain and Germany and further afield in South Africa, Pakistan and the US. Despite the Cork work’s connection with the massive worldwide organisation, the Irish section of 2,500 employees was manned almost exclusively by Irish personnel. In an interview by Mr Flynn with Mr E J Power, general manager of the company in Ireland, Mr Power noted of the forecast that the car population of the country was to grow at a faster rates. Mr Power noted: “we are carrying out plans for modernisation, to meet the growing volume of the Irish market”.

Mr Power’s plans were revealed as costing £2million when unveiled in November 1965. The expansion programme included moving the Dunlop head office from Dublin to Cork’s Marina to a specially constructed six-storey block. A new sales head-quarters was to be erected in Dublin. The company had found that the factory and headquarters were best sited together, giving close liaison between management and production departments. The new office block at Cork was designed so that a computer centre could occupy the whole of one floor. The nucleus of the research staff, recruited from Irish universities, then begun in Dunlop’s central research and development division, located near Fort Dunlop, Birmingham.

To be continued…

 

Captions:

754a. Advertisement for Dunlop’s Tyres, 1960s (Source: Cork City Library)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 3 July 2014

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

749a. Albert Quay terminus, Cork City, 1930s

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 3 July 2014

“Technical Memories (Part 81) –An Auld Acquaintance”

 

Whilst Cork Airport was being built to great acclaim in 1960-61 (see last week), other transport routes also came under scrutiny. The Minister for Transport and Power, Erskine Childers, officially opened Cork’s new bus station at Parnell Place on Wednesday 12 October 1961. The building was blessed by Canon Fehily, Parish Priest of SS Peter and Paul’s Church, in the presence of the then Lord Mayor Sean Barrett TD, the architect J R Boyd Barrett and CIE Chairman Dr C S Andrews. The main contractor was P J Hegarty & Sons from Leitrim Street and its Franki piles were installed by the Irish Piling and Construction Company Ltd (Dublin and Cork). The Franki piling system (also called pressure-injected footing) is a method used to drive expanded base cast-in-situ concrete (Franki) piles.

In the course of his address Minister Childers praised CIE’s expansion of its modern road services. He also referred to an end of an era – CIE’s decision to close the railways of West Cork. He said that criticisms of rail closures were often based on sentimentalism and that claims that closure would result in heavy expenditure being placed on the region’s roads were exaggerated. Referring to reports and accounts of CIE for 1959/ 60, he noted that the average number of passengers carried on the West Cork trains was 30 and the average goods train was 45 tons, which were not sustainable to keep the line and its branch lines open.

Well known names were associated with the West Cork lines in times past. There was the famous engineer, Charles Nixon, under whose direction Chetwynd viaduct and the two tunnels on the line (Kilpatrick, near Innishannon and Gogginshill near Ballinhassig) were built. No less eminent was his assistant Joseph Philip Ronayne, who after years of engineering in California, was to become MP for Cork, 1872-1876). He was an Irish language enthusiast years and his home at Rushbrooke was called Rinn Ronain and the first two engines on the Bandon line bore Gaelic titles, Sighe Gaoithe and Rith Tinneagh (Whirlwind and Burning Fire). Noted investors were Major North Ludlow Beamish, the Earl of Bandon, T McCarthy Downing, Sir John Arnott, Lord Carbery, J Warren Payne, Colonel Travers, all of whom in their various times furthered the development of the lines. There were also the great men who staffed the trains – drivers, firemen and guards. The Cork Examiner remarked on the last day of the Cork-Bantry train on Friday 31 March 1961; “Whether it was coaxing a steam engine up the long defile at Gleann, west of Dunmanway, on handling the excited holiday crowds at Baltimore and Courtmacsherry, they did their jobs efficiently and without fuss, in all weathers and under all conditions. Never was there a mere loyal band than the railwaymen of West Cork”.

The Cork Examiner on Saturday 1 April 1961 gave a descriptive sentimental account of the last journey of the West Cork line. A Garda squad car trailed the last train on the West Cork line from Cork to Bantry. They were there to quash any violent protest by local residents served by the line and who were against the closure. On board a squad of uniformed Gardaí also travelled, and at every station the blue uniform was present. However, the media did not record violent demonstrations but sentimental ones. Since the first day in 1849, when the Bandon Railway was opened, this was probably the most unique trip ever made on the 112 old line – and the trip was taken by a strong squad of press reporters and photographers and a gathering of representatives of the Irish Railway Record Society as well as many who were making the sentimental journey.

Hundreds of well-wishers crowded the platform at Albert Quay. Children sought the autographs of the driver Tralee-born Dan Murphy, and the excitement and confusion, which marked the occasion, delayed the start for almost ten minutes. It was just after nine minutes past 6pm when Guard Denis Hannigan waved the green flag and to the double-noted blast of the hooter Dan Murphy eased engine ‘2660-2641’ away from the platform. The Cork Examiner recorded the surrounding fuss; “ Farewell cheers rose, ‘bus rolls’ streamed from the hands of CIE men over the labouring train; the staccato snap of fog signals crushed beneath her wheels, and the mournful wall of locomotive whistles signalled the departure of the last train to West Cork”.

As the train sped through the suburbs the various bridges over-looking the line were thronged. Out then into the country, over the Black Ash bridge, onto the Chetwynd Viaduct, where many a bowl player had been challenged to loft the bridge. Past the picturesque Bandon River through Clonakilty, Desert, Dunmanway, Drimoleague, Aghaville, Durrus Road and journeying onto Bantry. The schedule for the journey was one of continued interruptions by well-wishing local people. Every station was filled to capacity by sightseers, and travellers on this historic occasion and the progress of the train was delayed. On entering Bantry a multitude of fog signals and cheers were heard and as the train pulled out on her solitary lonely trip back to Cork, the hundreds of spectators sang “Should Auld Acquaintance be Forgot”.

To be continued…

 

Caption:

749a. Albert Quay Terminus, Cork City, 1930s, part of West Cork Railway Line (picture: Cork City Library)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 12 June 2014

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

746a. Walled town of Cork, c.1575

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 12 June 2014

Kieran’s City Walking Tours, 17 & 20 June 2014

 

My summer walking tours of Cork City centre continue and conclude next week Tuesday evening, 17th June and Friday evening, 20th June. The tours begin at the National Monument on the Grand Parade, at 7pm on those evenings and explore the City Centre’s early development on a swamp. The tour costs e.5 per person and children under 12 are free. No booking is required, just turn up on the evening.

One of the aspects of the city’s development addressed on the walking tour is the walled town of Cork. Access into walled settlement was via three entrances; two well-fortified drawbridges with associated towers and an eastern portcullis gate. Access from the southern valley side was via South Gate Draw-Bridge while entry from the northern valley side was through North Gate Draw-Bridge. Various depictions of the walled town show menacing symbols of power at the top of the drawbridge towers where the dismembered heads of executed criminals were placed as a warning to the other citizens contemplating crime. The severed head was placed onto a spike and this was slotted into a rectangular slab of stone. Legend has it that one of the stone blocks still exists and today can be seen at the top of the steps of the Counting House in Beamish and Crawford Brewery on South Main Street. Other methods of execution involved been hung at Gallows Green, a location on the southern valley side near to the southern road leading into town. The site is now marked by Greenmount National School and the Lough Community Centre.

The third entrance overlooked the eastern marshes and was located at the present day intersection of Castle Street and the Grand Parade. Known as Watergate and comprising of a large portcullis gate, this opened to allow ships into a small quay, located within the town. On both sides of this gate, two large mural towers, known as King’s Castle and Queen’s Castle controlled its mechanics. Today, the place-name Castle Street echoes their former presence. In 1996, when new sewage pipes were been put in place on Castle Street, work was halted when Cork archaeologists found two stone rubble portions of the rectangular foundation of Queen’s Castle. A further section was discovered in 1997. Through these excavations, sections of the medieval quay wall were also discovered on Castle Street. The importance of Watergate is also reflected in the city’s contemporary coat of arms, which shows two castles (King’s and Queen’s) and a ship in between, with a Latin insignia, “Statio Bene Fida Carinis”, meaning a safe harbour for ships.

In the last three decades, a substantial amount of archaeological excavations have taken place within the former area of the walled town and many facets of the townscape and society have been revealed. In particular, several sections of the lower courses of the town walls have been discovered along with parts of streets, laneways, housing and even the remains of citizens. The Pacata Hibernia depiction of the medieval town dates to circa 1585-1600 and shows the wall encompassing an oval shaped settlement. The walled defences, 1,500 metres in circumference, were to provide security for its inhabitants up to 1690. In a present day context, if one starts on the corner of the Grand Parade and the South Mall, on the city library side, the walls of the medieval town would have extended the full length of the Grand Parade, along Cornmarket Street, onto the Coal Quay, up Kyrl’s Quay to the North Gate Bridge. From here they would have extended up Bachelor’s Quay as far as Grattan Street, then turning southwards, the walls would have followed the full length of present day Grattan Street as far as present day Clarke’s Bridge. The walls then followed the course of the River Lee back to the starting point. Much of the town wall survives beneath the modern street surface and in some places has been incorporated into existing buildings. The wall was composed of two stone types, limestone and sandstone, types, which have been used down through the ages in Cork buildings from warehouses to churches. Sandstone deposits are common on the northern hills overlooking Cork while limestone deposits are common under the southern hills.

On the wall, at regular intervals were mural towers, which projected out from the wall and were used as lookout towers by the town’s garrison of soldiers. The walled town of Cork extended from South Gate Bridge to North Gate Bridge and was bisected by long spinal main streets, North and South Main Street. These were the primary route-ways and compared to today, these would have been much narrower but followed an identical plan.  In the early half of the life of the walled town, the majority of the houses overlooked the main street and running perpendicular to North and South Main Street were numerous narrow laneways, which provided access to the back gardens or burgage plots of the latter dwellings. Comprised of individual and equal units of property, burgage plots extended from the main street to the town wall. The sizes of these plots were carefully regulated by owners, tenants and borough charters.

More on the walking tour and keep an eye…

 

Caption:

746a. Walled town of Cork, c.1575 (source: Cork City Library)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 5 June 2014

Cork City Events, Cork History, Kieran's Council Work, Landscapes, Uncategorized

745a. Recent re-opening of Fitzgerald's Park, May 2014

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,  5 June 2014

 

Kieran’s City Walking Tours, June 2014

 

This year I bring the summer walking tours of Cork City centre back during the month of June, on Tuesday evenings, 10th, 17th, and Friday evenings, 13th & 20th. The tours begin at the National Monument on the Grand Parade, at 7pm on those evenings and explore the City Centre’s early development on a swamp. The tour costs e.5 per person and children under 12 are free. No booking is required, just turn up on the evening. Further information if needed can be attained from me at 0876553389.

 

The tour is based on my publication Discover Cork, which was published eleven years ago as a guide to the city’s history. In this book I outline the city’s development and it opens with eminent Cork writer Daniel Corkery’s account of the city in his The Threshold of Quiet (1917) which highlights well the physical landscape of Cork City:

“Leaving us, the summer visitor says in his good humoured way that Cork is quite a busy place…as hundrum a collection of odds and ends as ever went by the name of city – are flung higgledy piggledy together into a narrow double-streamed, many bridged river valley, jostled and jostling, so compacted that the mass throws up a froth and flurry that confuses the stray visitor…for him this is Cork”.

 

One of the distinct questions that arises out of his narrative relates to the query, who could have built such a landscape. It was a combination of native and outside influences, primarily people that shaped its changing townscape and society since its origins as a settlement. The city possesses a unique character derived from a combination of its plan, topography, built fabric and its location. Indeed, it is also a city that is unique among other cities, it is the only one which has experienced all phases of Irish urban development, from circa 600 A.D. to the present day.

 

       The settlement began as a monastic centre in the seventh century, overlooking a series of marshy islands on which the present day city centre grew and flourished; it was transformed into a Viking port and the advent of the Anglo-Normans led to the creation of a prosperous walled town; it grew through the influx of English colonists during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and suffered the political problems inherent in Irish Society at that time; it was altered significantly again through Georgian and Victorian times when reclamation of its marshes became a priority along with the construction of spacious streets and grand town houses; its docks, warehouses exhibit the impact of the industrial revolution; and in the last one hundred years, Corkonians have witnessed both the growth of extensive suburbs and the rejuvenation of the inner city.

 

       Perhaps, the most important influence in the city’s development is the River Lee, an element which has witnessed the city grow from monastic Cork through the Celtic Tiger City of the twenty-first century. Originally, the city centre was a series of marshy islands, which the Irish for the city, “Corcaigh” translated marshes reflects. The river splits into two channels just west of the city centre, and hence flows around the city centre, leaving it in an island situation. The urban centre was built on the lowest crossing point of the River Lee, where the river meets the sea. Built on the surrounding valleysides of the River Lee, the city’s suburbs are constructs of the twentieth century where a spiralling population dictated Cork’s expansion beyond its municipal boundaries.

            Spliced with the city’s physical development is the story of its people and their contribution in making Cork a city whose history is rich and colourful. The characters are astute, confident, and are often rebellious, a distinctive trait of Corkonians through the ages and are remembered in Cork songs, statues, street-names and oral tradition. Corkonians make Cork unique. Their characteristics have been noted through the centuries, from visitors to antiquarian writers. All agree that its people are warm and very sociable. Joking is an essential characteristic of Corkonians. As one antiquarian, Byran Cody in 1859 put it, conversational power is the test of intellectual culture in Cork. A Corkonian is a good talker and the conversation is usually seasoned with spicy anecdotes and pleasant bits of scandal.

 

           A walk through St Patrick Street or affectionately known as ‘Pana’ will reveal the warmth of its people, the rich accent, the hustle and bustle of a great city. As Robert Gibbings, poet and writer put it in 1944, “Cork is the loveliest city in the world, anyone who doesn’t agree with me either was not born there or is prejudiced. The streets are wide, the quays are clean, the bridges are noble and people that you have never met in your life stop you in the street for a conversation”. Not only can each person tell you a story about Cork but its streets, buildings and bridges also do. They echo the rich historic and cultural development of the acclaimed southern capital of Ireland.

 

 

 

Caption:

 

745a. Recent re-opening of Fitzgerald’s Park, May 2014 (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

Historical Walking Tour of St. Finbarre’s Hospital, 7 June 2014

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

On next Saturday, 7 June 2014, 12noon (meet at gate), Cllr Kieran McCarthy, in association with the Friends of St Finbarr’s Hospital, will give a public historical walking tour of the hospital grounds with particular focus on its workhouse past. The walk is free and takes place to support the summer fete of the Friends.  Cllr McCarthy noted: “St Finbarr’s Hospital, the city’s former nineteenth century workhouse, serves as a vast repository of narratives, memories, symbolism, iconography and cultural debate”. When the Irish Poor Relief Act was passed on 31 July 1838, the assistant Poor Law commissioner, William J. Voules came to Cork in September 1838 to implement the new laws. Meetings were held in towns throughout the country. By 1845, 123 workhouses had been built, formed into a series of districts or Poor Law Unions, each Poor Law Union containing at least one workhouse. The cost of poor relief was met by the payment of rates by owners of land and property in that district.

In 1841 eight acres, 1 rood and 23 perches were leased to the Poor Law Guardians from Daniel B. Foley, Evergreen House, Cork. Mr. Foley retained an acre, on which was Evergreen House with its surrounding gardens, which fronted South Douglas Road (now a vacant concrete space). The subsequent workhouse that was built on the leased lands was opened in December 1841. It was an isolated place, built beyond the City’s toll house and toll gates. The Douglas Road workhouse was also one of the first of over 130 workhouses to be designed by the Poor Law Commissioners’ architect George Wilkinson.

Cllr Kieran McCarthy’s ‘Make a Model Boat Project’ 2014, Fourth Year

Arts, Cork City Events, Kieran's Council Work, Landscapes, Uncategorized, Ward Events

 

Cllr Kieran McCarthy invites all Cork young people to participate in the fourth year of McCarthy’s ‘Make a Model Boat Project’. All interested must make a model boat at home from recycled materials and bring it along for judging to Cork’s Lough on Sunday afternoon, 1 June 2014, 2pm. The event is being run in association with Meitheal Mara’s Ocean to City, Cork’s Maritime Festival and the Lifetime Lab. There are three categories, two for primary and one for secondary students. There are prizes for best models and the event is free to enter. Cllr McCarthy, who is heading up the event, noted “I am encouraging creation, innovation and imagination amongst our young people, which are important traits for all of us to develop”. See www.kieranmccarthy.ie under community programme details, http://kieranmccarthy.ie/?p=10496