Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 20 June 2013

Workhouse, JFK and Docklands Tours

Aside from the summer city walking tours running at the moment, I have two suburb walking tours coming up across the next week. Next Saturday morning, 22 June at 12noon in association with the summer garden fete of the Friends of St Finbarr’s Hospital, I will conduct a historical walking tour of St Finbarr’s Hospital with special reference to its workhouse and Great Famine history (meet at gate, free, as part of my community work in the south-east ward). The second tour is the following Friday evening, 28 June at 7pm of Cork Docklands (free) at Kennedy Park, Victoria Road. Special focus will be given on marking the fiftieth anniversary of John F Kennedy coming to Cork and getting Freeman of the City on 28 June 1963. He left Cork by helicopter from the park now named after him. The tour will also take in Albert Road/ Jewtown/ Hibernian Buildings and the city’s docks.

On St Finbarr’s Hospital, I have always admired the view from the entrance gate onto the rolling topography extending to beyond the southern boundaries of the City. Here also is the intersection of the built heritage of Turners Cross, Ballinlough and Douglas. These are Cork’s self sufficient, confident and settled suburbs, which encompass former traditions of market gardening to Victorian and Edwardian housing on the Douglas Road. Then there is the Free State private housing by the Bradley Brothers such as in Ballinlough and Cork Corporation’s social housing developments, designed by Daniel Levie, on Capwell Road. Douglas Road as a routeway has seen many changes over the centuries from being a rough trackway probably to begin with to the gauntlet it has become today during the work and school start and finish hours.

With mid nineteenth century roots, the hospital was the site of the city’s former workhouse but as such here is one of Cork’s and Ireland’s national historic markers. Written in depth over the years by scholars such as Sr M Emmanuel Browne and Colman O’Mahony, many in-depth primary documents have survived to outline the history of the hospital. What shines out are the memories of how people have struggled at this site since its creation in 1841. Other topics perhaps can also be pursued here such as the history of social justice at the site, why and how society takes care of the vulnerable in society and the framing of questions on ideas of giving humanity and dignity to people and how they have evolved over the centuries.

The Hospital serves as a vast repository of memories, symbolism, iconography and cultural debate. Standing at the former workhouse buildings, which opened in December 1841, there is much to think about – humanity and the human experience. The architect to the Poor Law Commissioners in Ireland from 1839 until 1855 was George Wilkinson. Nearly all the workhouses, accommodating between 200 and 2000 persons apiece, were designed in a Tudor domestic idiom, with picturesque gabled entrance buildings which contracted the size and comfortlessness of the institutions which lay behind them. By April 1847 all 130 workhouses were complete, the Douglas Road being one of the first.

With its association with the memory of the Great Famine, there are also many threads of the history of the hospital to interweave – the political, economic and social framework of Ireland at that time plus the on the ground reality of life in the early 1800s – family, cultural contexts, individual portraits. In the present day history books in school, the reader is drawn to very traumatic terms. The recurring visions comprise human destruction, trauma, devastation, loss. One can see why the Great Famine is more on the forgetting list than on the remembering one.

At the same time as the development of the workhouse on Douglas Road was struggling, the city continued to extend its docks area. In the late 1800s, the port of Cork was the leading commercial port of Ireland. The export of pickled pork, bacon, butter, corn, porter, and spirits was considerable. The manufactures of the city were brewing, distilling and coach-building, which were all carried on extensively. I’m a big fan of the different shapes of these wharfs, especially the timber ones that have survived since the 1870s. A myriad of timbers still prop up the wharves in our modern port area, protecting the city from the ebb and flow of the tide and also the river’s erosive qualities. The mixture of styles of buildings etch themselves into the skyline, Add in the tales of ships over the centuries connecting Cork to other places and a community of dockers, and one gets a site which has always looked in a sense beyond its horizons. Indeed, perhaps the theme that runs through the docklands walking tour is about connections and explores sites such as Jewtown, the National Sculpture Factory, the Docks, the old Park Racecourse, and the early story of Fords. All these topics are all about connecting the city to wider themes of exportation and importation of goods, people and ideas into the city through the ages. I hope to have a page on John F Kennedy’s visit to Cork in 1963 next week.

Captions:

696a. Recent sunset on Douglas Road highlighting the workhouse memorial plaque (source: Kieran McCarthy)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 27 September 2012

“Docklands Historical Walking Tour, 6 October 2012”

My historical walking tour of Cork’s Docklands is one I’ve been designing for a while. It runs, Saturday 6 October (2pm from Shalom Park, in front of Bord Gais, free, two hours).  Much of the story of Cork’s modern development is represented here. The history of the port, transport, technology, modern architecture, agriculture, sport, the urban edge with the river all provide an exciting cultural debate in teasing out how Cork as a place came into being. The origin of the current Docklands is a product of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century.

Ever since Viking age time over 1,000 years ago, boats of all different shapes and sizes have been coming in and out of Cork’s riverine and harbour region continuing a very long legacy of trade. Port trade was and still is the engine in Cork’s development. To complement the growth of the port, extensive reclamation of swampland took place as well as physical infrastructure quays, wharfs and warehouses.  I’m a big fan of the different shapes of these wharfs, especially the timber ones that have survived since the 1870s. A myriad of timbers still prop up the wharves in our modern port area, protecting the city from the ebb and flow of the tide and also the river’s erosive qualities. The mixture of styles of buildings, which etch themselves into the skyline, also create a kind of drama to unravel on the landscape itself.  Add in the tales of ships over the centuries connecting Cork to other places and a community of dockers, and one gets a site which has always looked in a sense beyond its horizons. Indeed, perhaps the theme that runs through the new walking tour is about connections and explores sites such as Jewtown, the National Sculpture Factory, the Docks, the old Park Racecourse, the early story of Fords and the former site of the Munster Agricultural Society. All these topics are all about connecting the city to wider themes of exportation and importation of goods, people and ideas into the city through the ages.

One hundred years ago, considerable tonnage could navigate the North Channel, as far as St. Patrick’s Bridge, and on the South Channel as far as Parliament Bridge. St. Patrick’s Bridge and Merchants’ Quay were the busiest areas, being almost lined daily with shipping. Near the extremity of the former on Penrose Quay was situated the splendid building of the Cork Steamship Company, whose boats loaded and discharged their alongside the quay.

In the late 1800s, the port of Cork was the leading commercial port of Ireland. The export of pickled pork, bacon, butter, corn, porter, and spirits was considerable. The manufactures of the city were brewing, distilling and coach-building, which were all carried on extensively. The imports in the late nineteenth century consisted of maize and wheat from various ports of Europe and America; timber, from Canada and the Baltic; fish, from Newfoundland and Labrador regions. Bark, valonia, shumac, brimstone, sweet oil, raisins, currants, lemons, oranges and other fruit, wine, salt, marble were imported from the Mediterranean; tallow, hemp, flaxseed from St. Petersburg, Rig and Archangel; sugar from the West Indies; tea from China, and coal and slate from Wales. Of the latter, corn and timber were imported in large numbers.

With such massive port traffic, there was silting up of what’s now the Tivoli channel. A wall called the Navigation Wall was constructed in 1763 to keep dredged silt behind. The wall was five feet across and about a mile in length. The completion of the wall led to a large tract of land behind the wall, stretch­ing from the Marina west to Victoria Road, being left in a semi-flooded condition. In the decade of the 1840s, City engineer Edward Russell was commissioned to present plans for the reclamation of this land, some 230 acres. Russell’s plan proposed the extension and widening of the Navigation Wall creating the Marina Walk, to exclude tidal water entering the land. He proposed the construction of a reservoir (the present Atlantic Pond), and the erection of sluice gates to facilitate the drainage and exclusion of water.

The slobland was gradually reclaimed and became a park and was used as a racecourse from 1869 to 1917. In March 1869, Cork Corporation leased to Sir John Arnott & others the land for a term of five years and for the purpose of establishing a race course. In 1892, the City and County of Cork Agricultural Society leased space from Cork Corporation in the eastern section of the Cork Park, which became the Cork Showgrounds. In 1917 a sizeable portion of the park was sold to Henry Ford to manufacture Fordson Tractors. Both the latter have a depth of history and memories attached to them.

Before the above tour, don’t forget, this Friday 28 September, 6.30pm, a historical walking tour with me of the Cork Blackrock Railway Line in aid of the Irish Heart Foundation, leaving from Pier Head carpark, Blackrock, E.15 per person. In addition, on that day, the city and county historical societies exhibit their local histories in the Millennium Hall, Cork City Hall, 11am-7pm.

Caption:

660a. Cork Docklands September 2012 (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

Earlier this year, I ran a walking tour of Blackrock village. On Saturday 22 September 2012, I will run this venture again (meet 2pm, Blackrock Castle, approx two hours).