Category Archives: Cork History

McCarthy’s Upcoming Community Projects

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

            ‘McCarthy’s History in Action Project will take place at the early summer school fair of Our Lady of Lourdes National School, Ballinlough on Sunday 13 May, 2012 2.30-5pm. This event, supported by Cllr. Kieran McCarthy, will bring history alive for all the family, with the participation of re-enactment groups, storytellers and more.

As part of ongoing research project into the local history of the south-east ward, Cllr Kieran McCarthy will conduct a historical walking tour of Blackrock Village on Sunday 13 May 2012, 6.30pm, leaving from Blackrock Castle (approx 1 ½ hours, free event). The earliest and official evidence for settlement in Blackrock dates to c.1564 when the Galway family created what was to become known as Dundanion Castle. Over 20 years later, Blackrock Castle was built circa 1582 by the citizens of Cork with artillery to resist pirates and other invaders. These and a range other themes will be discussed on the walking tour.

 

Cllr McCarthy’s Make a Model Boat Project takes place at Cork’s Atlantic Pond on Sunday afternoon, 10 June 2012, 2pm. Cork students are encouraged to make model boats at home from recycled materials and bring it along to the Atlantic Pond for judging.  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. Innovation and imagination is encouraged. Further details on all the events above can be found under community programme at www.kieranmccarthy.ie.

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article, 3 May 2012

Cork History, Uncategorized

639a. Group of delegates photographed at the Crawford Municipal institute Cork, June 1912

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 3 May 2012

Technical Memories (Part 15)

Awake, Arise or Forever Fallen

 

 

Sligo born William Joseph Myles Starkie (1860 – 1920) was a noted Greek scholar and translator of Aristophanes. He was President of Queen’s College, Galway (1897–1899) and the last Resident Commissioner of National Education for Ireland under British rule (1899–1920). He was the second of the keynote speakers at the eleventh annual congress of the Irish Technical Instruction Association on 5 June 1912, which was held at the Crawford Municipal Technical Instruction, Sharman Crawford Street, Cork.

Known for his controversial reform packages in education, William Starkie was well known. He was appointed Resident Commissioner of National Education for Ireland in February, 1899. He started with abolishing the ‘Results’ system in which the amount of a teacher’s salary depended on the results of the annual oral examinations of their pupils. This he argued in documents in UCC’s library tended to produce a very mechanical form of teaching aimed mainly at satisfying the Inspector. A child could pass a Reading Test and not understand a word of it. Introducing the payment of a regular salary he improved matters. In 1904 he began a campaign to amalgamate small schools, but here he ran foul of the Catholic Bishops and clergy. Some clerics opposed the amalgamation of boys and girls schools as being morally dangerous. In the end the Catholic authorities prevailed. William Starkie was responsible for making Shakespeare familiar to the boys and girls in the National schools throughout Ireland, and he also introduced Irish History into the National School’s primary curriculum. Up until then the authorities forbade lessons in Irish History or even Geography in order to prevent any chance of nurturing independence in the classroom. He authorized the distribution of a ‘pro-establishment’ Irish history text by Patrick Weston Joyce.

Dr. William Starkie’s paper at the Crawford Institute congress, which was published in the Cork Examiner, was on the importance of creating continuation schools or a technical form of secondary schools. He said the motto he had selected for his paper was from John Milton’s Paradise Lost and the address by Lucifer, the Fallen Angel to the angels of heaven, “Awake, Arise! Or be forever fallen”.  In Milton’s book I Satan lures the angels to his side by making them believe that to follow him is to rise above God and that if they do not, they will be fallen angels. Starkie continued in the early parts of his speech to criticize the House of Commons approach to Irish education, that in a sense it was a fallen angel of interest in Irish political affairs. He argues that the important debate on Irish education estimates was conducted in 1911 by about forty Irish members of parliament.

 

Starkie’s interest in education across religious groups is interesting. For example he drew strongly on the words of Sir Edward Carson that “the neglect and starvation of Irish education, has been a reproach to the intelligence and humanity of successive administrations”. Carson was leader of the Irish Unionist Alliance and Ulster Unionist Party between 1910 and 1921 and strongly against the Home Rule Bill going through in 1912. He also drew on the strong speeches and words of Otto Von Bismarck German statesman who unified numerous German states into a powerful German Empire under Prussian leadership in the 1860s and 1870s:

“ we shall be ruined by examinations, the majority of those, who pass them are naturally so run down that they are incapable of initiative ever afterwards. They take up a negative attitude towards everything that is submitted to them; and, what is worst of all, they have a great opinion of their capabilities because they once passed their examinations with credit”. Speaking on this Starkie continued, “what we want is not learned Mandarine, but men of energy and intellectual grip…After all, the only searching examination is that of real life; and if we fail in it, all academic successes are mere vanity and vexation of spirit”.

 

In his speech, Starkie described that whilst travelling about Ireland in 1903, that in many parts of the country, where the children were brightest, and the schools most efficient, there was an almost complete dearth of higher education suited to their needs. Thus in Kerry and West Cork, where primary education was according to him “probably the most excellent in the country”, there were no secondary schools except in Dingle, Tralee, Killarney and Macroom and Skibbereen. As there were no state bursaries available, and few travelling facilities, the existing secondary schools could not be utilized by the outlying population except by candidates for the priesthood, who received ecclesiastical help. A similar lack of higher education he noted existed in Donegal, Mayo and Galway. He gave the example of the Scotch educational system, who were well supplied with what he called intermediate schools. They had found it necessary to establish thirty-five higher grade schools. Starkie spent some time visiting some of these schools in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Such schools in Ireland, according to him, would have two aims, first to continue education beyond the elementary stage, and secondly to communicate branches of knowledge as to suggest various occupations in life to students.

 

To be continued…

 

 

Caption:

 

639a. Group of delegates photographed at the Crawford Municipal Institute, Cork June 1912 (photo: Guy & Co.)

Blackrock Historical Walking Tour, Sunday 13 May 2012

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

Dundanion Castle, Blackrock, May 2012

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

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

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

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 26 April 2012

Cork History, Uncategorized

638a. Discussion on a paper at the 1912 Technical Congress, Cork

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 26 April 2012

Technical Memories (Part 14)

The Making of National Syllabuses

 

 

The eleventh annual congress of the Irish Technical Instruction Association opened at 10 o’clock yesterday morning in the Crawford Municipal Technical Instruction, Sharman Crawford Street. There was a large attendance of delegates from all parts of Ireland…the Right Hon., the Lord Mayor of Cork, Alderman O’Brien, attended in state and extending a welcome to the members said, my Lords and gentlemen-I esteem it a great honour and no ordinary pleasure to offer you on behalf of the municipality of Cork a cordial welcome to this most important gathering of the representatives and Technical Instruction in Ireland (Cork Examiner, 1912, 5 June 1912).

 

To mark the opening of the Crawford Technical Institute on Sharman Crawford Street four months later in June 1912, the annual congress of the Irish Technical Instruction Association held their meeting in the Institute. All of the speeches, questions and debates on education are published in their annual journals, some of which survive in the Cork Archives. The minutes of the 1912 Cork event are described in the Cork Examiner on the 5 and 6 June 1912. Interestingly amidst these issues are also minutes of the official inquiry of the sinking of the Titanic in London.

 

The Cork congress was opened by the President of the Association Bertram Windle who outlined the agenda. Dealing first with the deficit in Westminster funding, he noted; “In fact if the money be not forthcoming, instead of going forward we will go back, for in matters educational there is no such thing as standing still”. In particular he introduced two topics to be discussed. The first was on new examination schemes by Mr. Fletcher, the permanent secretary of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction. The second paper was a paper on continuation schools by Mr. William Starkie, the Resident Commissioner of National Education, who was also the Chairman of the Intermediate Board. I dwell on these papers because of the ambition they exerted for the Irish educational system and debates, which still echo strongly in today’s system.

 

Mr. Fletcher explained the new examination of the Department of Technical and Agricultural Instruction. He said that it was about six years previously at a Congress meeting in Waterford that it was decided to revise the scheme for the administration of the science and arts grants. He felt that little action had happened since that time.  There was a grant scheme introduced in the early part of the 1911 season, which greatly benefited small technical instruction centres who wished to receive grant money for promoting single subjects.

 

The establishment of an Irish system of examinations had also been urged upon the Department since its initiation. Up to 1912, the Irish Department made use of the English Board of Education of the Society of Arts and other examining bodies. They deemed this important for students entering the jobs market in Ireland and Britain. At least the examinations were common to the Britain and Ireland. Moreover the examination schemes were largely paid for out of funds other than their own technical system. According to Fletcher, this system was to be reviewed. The English Board of Education had completely revised and reshaped its programme and it was time that the Department in Ireland arranged their own examination systems. Fletcher went on his paper to add that the Department had never used examinations as a means of accessing grants for educational purposes. Hence, to him one of the greatest dangers connected with examinations had been avoided. That according to Fletcher “there was the rut into which examinations had come to be regarded as an end in themselves, having no reference to what was to come afterwards”.

 

Presenting a number of further options, Fletcher noted that the examination system could be purely voluntary. If the school or individual didn’t want to take up the examination there would be nothing to push them to do so. However, he further argued that Ireland did need examinations just as every other country.  There were necessary as the basis for judging the progress of schools and to judge the “efficiency of the individual”. Fletcher debated that examinations should not control or dominate in any way the educational system. It was, according to Fletcher, “extremely difficult to frame a system of examinations that would not stereotype educational matters”. The first aim of the Department’s new scheme was to frame a scheme, which would allow the widest latitude of choice of subjects within reason. Many good schemes too had been ruined by endeavouring to do too much. It was not proposed in the contemporary scheme to meet the needs of every individual. They were proposing to break away from examinations in individual subjects. Fletcher believed that the Department was not called upon to give a diploma for every kind of work. The scheme would provide distinct courses of instruction – mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, applied chemistry, building trades, art, commerce and domestic economy.

 

In drawing up the schemes of syllabuses, the Department received aid from the principals of technical schools, and afterwards the members of the staff who were specialists in the various branches in the different technical schools. The examinations would be spread over a course of four years, and they proposed to restrict the examinations to two in each year. In the third and fourth years there were options or parallel courses. Thus in the case of mechanical engineering there were two courses, either of which could be followed after the first year. For example there was a course in office work- ‘machine origin’ and one in ‘workshop practice’. It was impossible to draft a course suitable to all types of electrical engineers. Hence they chose to draft three courses, (1) power production and lighting, (2) telegraphy and (3) telephony.

 

They proposed not to issue certificates except for the third and fourth courses, that in the third course being a full certificate. Out of all that they could make up the qualifications required for teachers, they were proposing to give an honours certificate. The teachers in their examination would be required to show some knowledge of the history, the aims, and the methods of examination. Similarly they suggested to allow similar options in art. There was also another way in which they hoped to avoid the danger of stereo typed teaching. By the advice of the examination body, they hoped to arrange a very wide choice of questions. At the same time it might be necessary to set one or more compulsory questions on matters of fundamental importance.

 

Caption:

 

638a. Discussion on a paper at the 1912 Technical Congress Cork (picture: Guy & Co.)

Blackrock Historical Walking Tour, Sunday 13 May 2012

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

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

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

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


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

Cork History, Uncategorized

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

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 19 April 2012

Technical Memories (Part 13)

Playing a Piano Badly

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

To be continued…

 

 

Caption:

 

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

 

Kieran’s 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)

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)