Cllr Kieran McCarthy has welcomed the update by the management of Cork City Council that phase one of the Blackrock Pier Development is on track to be finished by December of this year. Funding for phase 2 is still being sought, which is the development of the car park and pier area itself. Cork City Council has now written to the National Transport Authority for continued funding of phase 2. It is expected that a decision on same will be made around the end of November and a report will be made to Council. If the funding application is successful the current contractor will commence construction on phase 2 in January 2017. Cllr McCarthy noted to the Chief Executive: “Phase 1 has been pursued quickly but with alot of patience asked of residents, business and the community association; it’s not a short term patience but long term in terms of twenty years or more waiting for this project. We are so close in completing what is a fantastic plan and one which all can be proud of; the tram track lines have reminded us all of the great heritage, Blackrock has. We need to finish what we started and not just stop in December”.

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 13 October 2016

Kieran’s New Book, Cork City History Tour

    The second of two books penned by myself this year has just been published by Amberley Press and is entitled Cork City History Tour. I have coincided its launch with a free historical walking tour of the Victorian Quarter for the Urban October, Life in the City Project – 2pm, meet at top of St Patrick’s Hill, Sunday 16 October. The new book promotes that the best way to get to know a city like Cork is to walk it – in Cork you can get lost in narrow streets, marvel at old cobbled laneways, photograph old street corners, look up beyond the modern shopfronts, gaze at clues from the past, be enthused and at the same time disgusted by a view, smile at interested locals, engage in the forgotten and the remembered, search and connect for something of oneself, thirst in the sense of story-telling – in essence feel the DNA of the place.

    Cork has a soul, which is packed full of ambition and heart. Giving walking tours over 21 years has allowed me to bring people on a journey into that soul but also receive feedback on the wider contexts of what visitors and locals have seen elsewhere. Cork is a city packed with historic gems all waiting to be discovered at every street corner. This book provides insights into about 60 such sites in and around the city centre island. One could have easily added three and four times as many sites to a book such as this.

    Cork possesses a north-west European and an eastern North Atlantic port story. Located in the south of Ireland, it is windswept by tail ends of North Atlantic storms, which consistently drench the city and rural areas with wind and rains – but they leave to showcase a very photogenic urbanity with amazing sunsets on the river channels and a resilient green agricultural hinterland and chiselled raw coastline. Cork’s former historic networks and contacts are reflected in its the physical urban fabric – its bricks, street layout and decaying timber wharfs. Inspired by other cities with similar trading partners, it forged its own unique take on port architecture.

    Twice a day and every day the tide sweeps in to erase part of this history. The river meanders through this city built on a swamp and sweeps in a sense its historic narratives along. Cork is bound to the river and tide as they are bound to it. It developed because of its connections through water to other cities in Ireland and within the former British empire. Exploring the harbour area, one can still find residues of the mud flat/ estuarine silt landscape that the city was constructed upon. It is a great feat of engineering to build a city on a swamp.

    In the new book, there are many historic sites for the reader to explore. Of course each one of the sites deserves a book to be written on them and many have by the city’s array of local historians. The book’s trail takes in the story of the early origins of the city – the monastic site of St Finbarr to Viking age histories to the Anglo-Norman walled town followed by historic areas such as Shandon, St Patrick’s Street, City Hall, Sunday’s Well and the Wellington Road Victorian Quarter.

    The first known settlement at Cork began as a monastic centre in the seventh century, founded by St Finbarre. This is now marked by the late nineteenth structure of St Finbarre’s Cathedral. it stands tall proud in its ecclesiastical heritage and also imbuing the city and wider region with a need for community to bring people together and to invest physically and morally in such structures. Hence, Cork has a myriad of church buildings with different styles from different times when such buildings were called upon to impart new messages about their contribution to the city.

    The main urban centre was built on a series of marshy islands at the lowest crossing-point of the river, where it meets the sea. One can imagine the timber posts struck into the marshland to mark out the tentative first couple of Viking houses, and the first fires lit in such flood prone structures. The laying of the first block of the Anglo-Norman town wall must have been equally momentous. The actual stone from beneath the encircling southern and northern hills – sandstone and limestone provided the defences. The creeking open for the first time of Watergate and the control by the King’s and Queen’s Castles would have sparked excitement especially as the first timber ship clocked against the key walls. Similarly, the first ship from somewhere abroad in England or France would have brought a sense of wonder and acknowledgment in the city’s role in maritime western Europe.

    The topping out of St Anne’s Church Shandon and years later the addition of the bells and clocks would have met with delight and pride. From the top of Shandon, you can gaze down upon the multi-coloured fabric and multi-faceted narrative presented in its urban fabric. Climbing down and walking amongst the streets and laneways, and unravelling those narratives has brought great joy to me personally and has kept me with my camera and notebook in hand trying to make sense of Cork’s place in north west Europe as an ambitious and soulful place.

 Cork City History Tour is available in Waterstones and Liam Ruiseals.

Captions:

 865a. Front cover of Cork City History Tour (2016) by Kieran McCarthy

 865b. Postcard of King Street, now MacCurtain Street, c.1900, the subject of a walking tour on the 16 October (source: Cork City Museum)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 6 October 2016

Kieran’s New Book, Cork 1916: A Year Examined

    Cork 1916: A Year Examined is the title of my new book, just published by Irish History Press. The co-author is author Suzanne Kirwan. The publication is our contribution to the 1916 commemoration debate. It takes the year 1916 from the point of view that there were multiple conversations to be heard during the year – a kaleidoscope of ideas which provided the context and framework for revolution – everyday life being one – some led Cork citizens to connect with the Republican mantra at the time and others to just maintain existence, survive and struggle with the bleakness of a national and local economy.

    Entering the Cork Examiner on 1 January and progressing page by page one discovers key nuggets about the nature of Cork society, the soul of Ireland’s southern capital, the ongoing conversations about maintaining a contemporary status of being one of Ireland‘s distinguished port cities, and all the advantages and problems that run with that. January 1916 begins with the aftermath of a winter storm – buildings were windswept and damaged, transport networks such as the City’s tramways were indented – as such there was nothing the Corporation of Cork and the citizens could do but sit it out and wait; much was out of their hands; the storm was something bigger than themselves. Indeed, the thread ‘much was out of their hands’ permeated throughout Irish society at this time – pervaded Cork society at this time. Cork’s place in international and local affairs made the city wait in an almost blurred and funnelled view – that the city’s future at this moment in time was governed by imperial and national factors – the storm of an Empire crossed multiple blurred lines of thought as such. Hence, this book publishes a cross-section of the more important everyday life themes, which emerged during the year. We publish verbatim what was in the Cork newspaper. For us, many of the articles we have chosen should and will resonate with the contemporary public and themes within the media today.

    The Cork Examiner on 1 August 1916 celebrated its 75^th anniversary and a proud tradition of “influencing public opinion” and offering “fairness” as they noted in their editorial on the day. Censorship was in operation and was defined by Westminster’s Defence against the Realm Act. Indeed, it is only when this act is written about that the Volunteers in Cork under Tómás McCurtain are spoken about, the miscommunication in keeping Cork Volunteers in Cork during Easter Week 1916 and the scale of such structures such as the internment camps. The output of the newspaper is biased. However still and all it is very interesting to explore the knock on effect of what became public news and what did not but lingered in personal archives in correspondence between volunteer leaders and soldiers. How does one interpret what was meant for the public realm or not? Whose story and history is it? Hence it is difficult to realise how much was given by Westminster to the press to publish – therefore questions need to be asked of the press coverage what is real and what is not real, true, half true or false? what news stories can you take at face value or not?

    Despite, the rationing of food and materials, the pulses of society in Cork retained it as an ambitious place. By the early twentieth century, the population of the city was 75,000 – the middle classes living in the expanding suburbs whilst the majority, the working classes lived in slum conditions. Unemployment and emigration were high. Unemployment, requests for wage increases, Union interventions, the role of employers and the needs of rate-payers reverberate in the pages throughout the year. The debates of the Cork industrial Association pops up in discourse throughout the pages of the paper, their efforts culminating in the large scale announcement of Ford Tractor and Car manufacturing coming to Cork in 1917. The Cork Harbour Board revelled in this announcement as well as plans for the physical rejuvenation of its quays.

    But perhaps above all what we have attempted to create with this book, is to construct a sounding board of sorts – that for all the voices within this book about ideas about Cork and its role in the seminal year of 1916, there are also many voices on the role of the ambitious city in Ireland and further afield to questions of poverty that have never been completely solved or overly discussed. Many of the topics on housing, fair wage, political partnerships and similar ambitions still rage across our newspapers. There is much to learn from this time – not just on the political side but that life itself in any city keeps moving and that society needs to grow and evolve with it – and that even from a dark time in Ireland’s past, there is much to learn about the diverse framework of historical events and how they shape ourselves and our future.

   The book Cork 1916, A Year Examined (2016) by Kieran McCarthy & Suzanne Kirwan is available in any good bookshops in the city or on Amazon.

Captions:

864a. Front cover of Cork 1916, A Year Examined by Kieran McCarthy & Suzanne Kirwan

864b. St Patrick’s Street, c.1910 (source: Cork City Museum)

    Cllr Kieran McCarthy’s new book, the eighteenth in his series of publications, is entitled Cork 1916, A Year Examined. It is co-written with solicitor Suzanne Kirwan. This book takes the year 1916 from the point of view that there were multiple conversations to be heard during the year – a kaleidoscope of ideas, which provided the context and framework for revolution – everyday life being one – some led Cork citizens to connect with the Republican mantra at the time and others to just maintain existence, survive and struggle with the bleakness of a national and local economy. Entering the Cork Examiner on 1 January and progressing page by page one discovers key nuggets about the nature of Cork society, the soul of Ireland’s southern capital, the ongoing conversations about maintaining a contemporary status of being one of Ireland‘s distinguished port cities, and all the advantages and problems that run with that.

     Cllr McCarthy noted; “In this book we publish a cross-section of the more important themes, which emerged during the year. The Cork Examiner in August 1916 celebrated its 75^th anniversary and a proud tradition of “influencing public opinion” and offering “fairness” as they noted in their editorials. As a newspaper it was an active driver in the control of media, place and even time. For all the voices within this book about ideas about Cork and its role in the seminal year of 1916, there are also many voices on the role of this ambitious city in Ireland and further afield to questions of poverty that have never been completely solved or overly discussed. Many of the topics on housing, fair wage, political partnerships and similar ambitions still rage across our newspapers. There is much to learn from this time – not just on the political side but that life itself in any city keeps moving and that society needs to grow and evolve with it – and that even from a dark time in Ireland’s past, there is much to learn about the diverse framework of historical events and how they shape ourselves and our future”. Cork 1916, A Year Examined is published by Irish History Press and available in Waterstones and Easons.

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 9 September 2016

Cork’s New Bishop 1916

    In continuing to explore Cork in 1916, this week one hundred years ago, the local newspapers were filled with the news the Assistant Bishop of Cork Daniel Cohalan (1858–1952) was to become the new Bishop of Cork following the death of Bishop Thomas Alphonsus O’Callaghan. Cohalan served as Bishop from 29 August 1916 to 24 August 1952 and he defined the sense of religion in the city during his time. Bishop Cohalan was born at Kilmichael, County Cork, in 1858, and his early school days were spent at St Vincent’s Seminary in the city, a school which gave many eminent scholars to the church. Subsequently Dr Cohalan went to Maynooth, and in 1883 was a curate at Kilbritain. In the following year he was professor at St Finbarr’s Seminary and chaplain to the Military Prison, Cork, after which he went to Tracton as curate.

    From 1886 to 1914 Dr Cohalan was Professor of Dogmatic and Moral Theology at Maynooth, which led to his appointment as Assistant Bishop of Cork, subsequently becoming Vicar Capitular, and then Bishop of the Diocese. Dr Cohalan was recognised as a profound scholar, whose contributions to Catholic magazines and journals such as the Irish Ecclesiastical Record were respected and set the framework for Roman Catholic theology thinking in the country.

    For many of his early years Cohalan found himself commenting on the nationalist independence struggles of the day. He attempted to take the middle ground in a struggle that was rapidly deteriorating into chaos and atrocity. His anti-violence attitude was the guiding principle in his episcopacy. He had a crucial role in condemning the 1916 rising and pressed that the Volunteers including Cork leaders Tomás MacCurtain and Terence McSwiney stand down in the face of superior Crown forces. Cohalan was eager to avoid bloodshed. In 1918 Bishop Cohalan campaigned against conscription into the British army. Whilst attending a public meeting in Cork, he made it clear that conscripting Irishmen to fight Britain’s wars was unacceptable.

    The 1920 burning of Cork City by the Black and Tans (following the Dillon’s Cross and other local and regional ambushes) resulted in a city and region dominated by the gun and violence. It prompted Bishop Cohalan to issue a decree of excommunication against those who perpetrated violence in any form. It was issued in SS Mary’s and Anne’s North Cathedral on 12 December 1920. This did not calm the situation. The IRA was unhappy with the decision and the position of the local Catholic Church especially as a number of the clergy were active in the IRA. Cohalan remained steadfast on the controversy isolating himself from republican parishioners and clergy, even to the point of refusing a Catholic burial to any hunger striker after 1922. To underline his support for law and order, Cohalan welcomed the 1922 Treaty, which established the Free State, agreeing that it was not perfect but was a great “measure of freedom”. This support was preached publicly in the North Cathedral on 10 December 1922.

    By the mid 1920′s the South Parish had grown in both population and area to a point where it could no longer function with a single church. In an effort to address the situation, Bishop Cohalan designated Turners Cross as the location for a second parish church to serve the ever-growing congregation. Commissioned in 1927, the church’s modern concrete architectural look initiated an enormous debate amongst those involved in the brick masons’ trade, which saw the use of concrete as cutting jobs for masons in the region. The architect was Chicago-born Barry Byrne (1883-1967) who was a former student of Frank Lloyd Wright. By the late 1920s Byrne had, designed three Catholic Churches in the US to acclaim and criticism. The model for Turners Cross was based on the Church of Christ the King, Tulsa, Oklahoma (1926).

    Work on the Turners Cross site began in March 1929. Its heavy foundations went down 15 feet into a marshy stream-like area. A total of 1,200 tons of Condor brand of Portland cement were used in its construction. Its marble terrazzo floor is overlooked by the largest suspended ceiling in a European church and it also possesses the impressive John Storr-designed Christ the King sculpture at its entrance. The church was officially dedicated on 25 October 1931 and set a marker for the future development of large churches in Cork’s suburbs. The notable exception was Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Ballinlough, planning for which started possibly 2-3 years after Christ the King. As Ballinlough church was a chapel of ease to St Michael’s Blackrock, there was a return to a traditional-looking and simple structure (opened in 1938).

    In 1937 Cohalan turned his attention to the role of the Protestant churches in Ireland. He encouraged the Protestant community of Cork to unite with its Catholic brethren to achieve Christian unity. He even went so far as to suggest to the Protestant Bishop of Cork that they merge the dioceses between them with St Finbarr’s Cathedral presiding over southside districts and the North Cathedral presiding over northside districts. All the Protestant Bishop had to do was to convert to Catholicism (!).

Captions:

860a. Portrait of Bishop of Cork, Daniel Cohalan (source: Farranferris Campus, Cork)

860b. Christ the King Church & the newly constructed Capwell Road, c.1931 (source: Christ the King Church, Cork)