Kieran’s Article, Our City, Our Town,

Cork Independent, 4 November 2010

In the Footsteps of St. Finbarre (Part 235)

The Market Place of Ireland

“Unnecessary imports of food-stuffs and building materials into Cork, therefore account for an unduly large proportion of Cork’s incoming traffic- the imports of foreign flour alone totalling 22,500 tons for the year ended 31^st July last. The only inference your council can draw from the returns of the imports is that Cork citizens are to a very large extent becoming gradually more and more dependent on the foreigners for food, clothing and shelter” (from annual report, Cork Chamber of Commerce, 1931, as published in the Irish Press, 1 December 1931, p.7).

In their address to the County of Cork Committee of Agriculture in mid August 1931, the members of the Irish Industrial and Agricultural Fair committee proposed to hold an exhibition or fair, which would accommodate exhibits and would illustrate native industry in Ireland. The fair committee noted that they were following the example of Denmark and Holland and believed the fair would be of great help in advertising the agricultural products of Ireland. They were also confident that the Department of Agriculture would enhance their efforts by putting up a building showcasing their own promotional efforts. The fair committee wanted the Department to show a farmhouse which would have a ten or twenty acre plot with out-offices and a suitable market garden. They also wished to have a small dairy on display to show cheese production. The fair committee noted that half the butter of Ireland was made by farmers themselves. The information the fair committee had was that much more cream could potentially be turned into cheese and sold. The committee maintained that the experiment was worth trying. It would cost a very small sum of money and if it succeeded it would have a far-reaching influence.

The fair committee were also of the opinion that horticulture should be very much advanced than it was. In 1931, there were £120,000 worth of tomatoes and only £200,000 worth of oranges imported into Ireland. Tomatoes, the committee asserted, could be produced better in Ireland because of climate, than in any other country in the world. The fair committee wanted the Department of Agriculture to co-operate with them in the matter of displaying forestry projects in Ireland. The Department had a forestry station near the city and as the fair committee intended running a road through the fair grounds they were anxious to have a plot in which each kind of native tree would be planted for display purposes. The fair committee praised the attempt to make the Munster Institute on Model Farm Road available to interested individuals who wish to gain in their farming enterprise by taking a personally conducted tour of the operation. The fair committee noted that such tours would be able to show the investment the Irish government had taken in encouraging the production of high quality eggs. The committee also hoped that University College Cork would display parts of its new creamery.

In a press statement on the 29 August 1931 in the Cork Examiner, further details on preparations for the Irish Industrial and Agricultural Fair 1932 were highlighted. Over eighty acres of land just off the Carrigrohane Straight were purchased from Mr. T.Corcoran, vice-chairman of the Cork County Council and the enclosing of the site and draining of the land began  The plans of the main industrial hall were approved and tenders were to be invited. Cash and approved guarantees were accepted and these amounted to £15,300. The minimum amount of guarantees had already been exceeded by August 1931 such was the popularity of the proposed event. The lay-out of the grounds was provisionally arranged subject to definite information from the various National Government Departments as to what form which their co-operation was going to take. Approximately 18 acres were put aside for an amusement park and the “concessionaires”, as well as providing the usual plant and machinery, intended to spend £8,000 to £10,000 in material for buildings to be erected in the park.

The fair prospectus, which survives in the archives of the Boole Library, UCC, reveals that whereby the Chairman was George Crosbie, he was assisted by his vice chairman Senator J.C. Dowdall, James Dwyer and W.J. Hickey plus 54 members of committee from political and business backgrounds. The prospectus pitched Cork as “The Market Place of Ireland”. The objects of the fair were set out. The industrial objects were to “display and make known the manufactures and agricultural products of Ireland, and to foster and develop the growing importance of Ireland’s trade and commerce, at home and abroad”. The agricultural objects aimed to demonstrate the “marvellous progress that is being made in agriculture and agricultural methods, and to display the skill and energy of the Irish producer in this direction”. The educational objects aimed to “afford illustrations of the great advance in teaching methods, of the facilities of education, and of the careers open to those who take advantage of them, and of the influence of such educational training on Irish industries and agriculture”. The historical objects aimed “to record the general desire to preserve national memories and to stimulate interest amongst the Irish people for the history and literature of Ireland”.

To be continued…

Captions:

564a. Draft sketch of planned fair grounds (source: Cork County Library)

564b. Advertisement, Irish Industrial and Agricultural Fair, Cork 1932 (Source: Nenagh Guardian, 2 April 1932, p.2)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town article,

Cork Independent, 28 October 2010

In the Footsteps of St. Finbarre (Part 234)

Depressions, Ideas and Spins  

 “I have no hesitation declared Mr. O’Connell [leader of the Irish Labour Party], in stating that this country is facing up to a state of emergency almost as  great, if not as  immediately apparent as that which threatened other countries during the past few months. The practical solution of their difficulties could be summed up in consequence- provide useful and remunerative employment for all who are able to work. It was no small problem, but it was not insoluble. Every person of good will must unite in devising practical methods to bring about such as a re-organisation “(Editorial, Cork Examiner, 5 September 1931, p.10)

At times reading the above, one could replace the year 1931 with 2010. In fact, there are many political commentaries played out in 1931 to question where the country’s economy was going and also to lay the foundations of lobbying the people for a general election in 1932. From the perspective of 2010, one can see the political spin in full form from parties such as Fianna Fáil and the Labour Party in an effort to collapse the Cumann na nGaedheal government. However, what is clear was that the country was in a time of not just recession but a time of great economic depression. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 in New York had seriously hindered trade with Ireland’s best customer, the USA and created an economic depression in Britain as well. The lack of trade also meant that emigration with the intention of attaining jobs in those countries highly difficult.

Cork as a city was no stranger to providing leadership through its national exhibitions in dark economic times. The Irish Industrial and Agricultural Fair held in Cork in 1931 and organised by the Cork business people not only put a focus on the importance of building Ireland up within itself but also sent a serious message to the rest of the country to fight morally for itself. Exhibitions had worked before in the city’s history to draw attention to its enterprises. Perhaps because of its port status, the city was open to foreign ideas more so than non maritime cities. It is interesting to note that in the five years leading up to Cork’s 1931 preparations for its 1932 event, several world fairs had played out with objectives to improve its national industries – Berlin (1926), Lyon, France (1927) Cologne, Germany (1928), Long Beach, United States – Pacific Southwest Exposition (1928),  Barcelona and Seville, Spanish International Exposition (1929),  Newcastle upon Tyne, England/  North East Coast Exhibition  (1929) Hangzhou, Republic of China (1929), Antwerp, Belgium (1930),  Liège, Belgium (1930), Stockholm International Exhibition (1930), Trondheim, Norway (1930), International Foundry Exhibition and Congress  at Milan, Italy (1931) and Paris, France (1931).

The Irish newspaper online resource (an access point is available in the Boole Library in UCC) provides a way to search through several newspapers to explore any topic. On the 16 May 1931, the Irish Independent ran a story that a meeting of prominent business men in Cork decided to create an Industrial and Agricultural Fair for Cork in 1932. It was announced that a site had been secured on the Carrigrohane Road and that a guarantee fund had already been assembled totalling £25,000. Mr. George Crosbie was appointed chairman and Sir Stanley Harrington, Sir A. Dobbin, James Dwyer and Senator J.C. Dowdall were vice chairmen. An obituary for the chairman in 1934 in the Irish Press for the 27 November reveals that George was born in 1864 and was educated at St. Vincent’s Seminary, Cork and later at Tullabeg College after which he joined the literary staff of the Cork Examiner. He was the son of Thomas Crosbie, who played a major part in the management of the paper. George was admitted to the Bar (law) in 1890. He stood for Cork in 1909 as Irish party representative but was defeated. He was defeated in the Senate election of 1925 but was elected Senator in 1932. He was the first president of Cork Industrial Development Association, which was founded in 1903. The Association was inspired perhaps in part by the 1902 and 1903 Cork International Exhibition. George Crosbie, in his capacity as President, met Mr. Henry Ford and interested him in establishing a Ford factory in Cork in 1917.

From the initial idea of the fair, the Cork Examiner also seems to begin to roll out a series of columns on the positive work of the Cork Industrial Fair committee, on the 17 August 1931, the Cork Examiner published the minutes of a meeting whereby on the previous day, chair of the committee George Crosbie’s addressed the County of Cork Committee of Agriculture to gain support for the venture and outlined a number of early objectives for the exhibition. The main thrust of Crosbie’s argument was that: “the time had about come when we should make some effort to try and help on the agricultural side of the country…Emigration had ceased and there was only one direction in which the people’s efforts could be directed and in the opinion of the those who were organising the fair, that was the land.”

Captions:

563a. George Crosbie, Chairman, Irish Industrial and Agricultural Fair, 1932 (sources: Cork County Library)

563b. Advertisement, 1932

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article, Cork Independent, 

21 October 2010

In the Footsteps of St. Finbarre (Part 233)

Footprints of a Free State

Of all the places, I have passed through in the Lee Valley, one of my favourite sites is the Lee Fields. I have often walked the length of the footpath along the river running parallel to the Carrigrohane Straight Road and marvelled at the natural slow if hypnotic view of the river. To me, the Lee Fields is an important cross-road where the River Lee’s natural wilderness and the urban wilderness of the City collide. 

The contrasts are extensive. One view is of the River Lee and its part of a large flood plain, shown regularly when the fields are waterlogged during Ireland’s rainy conditions or when the dam at Inniscarra is forced to release reservoir water. The other view is of Cork’s and Ireland’s most impressive buildings such as the Waterworks, Our Lady’s Hospital and the County Hall. There seems to be a playfulness here between the scenery versus harnessing the power of the place to construct monuments such as the latter buildings to the serve the people.

The Carrigrohane Straight Road was built circa the late 1830s and early 1840s. Earlier maps such as Taylor and Skinner’s Maps of the Roads of Ireland (1776) or the Grand Jury map of 1811 do not show any track or path in this area. However, the first edition of the Ordnance Survey Map (1841-42) shows that work was in progress on the new road linking Cork City with Carrigrohane and Leemount Cross. The Straight Road seemed to be built by 1842. The section as far as Leemount Cross (including Leemount Bridge) may not have been completed until during the famine (1845-50).

Work by local historian Walter McGrath reveals that the building of the Straight Road and its extension on to Leemount Cross changed the traffic pattern to the west of the city. That required the building of two bridges – one over the tail race of Carrigrohane Flour Mills, the second over the River Lee. Before the Straight Road and Leemount Bridge were built, the Model Farm Road took traffic to Ballincollig and Macroom while the Lee Road led to Blarney, Coachford and Inniscarra. The original surface of Carrigrohane Straight Road was limestone. In 1927, the County Council and Corporation, who both controlled sections of the Straight Road, laid reinforced concrete. The Straight Road was one of the first concrete road surfaces in Ireland and one of the first in Great Britain. The South of Ireland Asphalt Company (S.I.A.C.) was engaged in the surfacing of the Straight Road and the concrete was hand laid.

The earliest known attempt to harness the Lee Fields for a mixture of business and leisure came through the construction of the holding of the Irish Industrial and Agricultural Fair in 1932 in the southern section of the Lee Fields, south of the Straight Road. A lesser known exhibition in the history of the Exhibitions in Cork, it became the fourth attempt (1852, 1883, 1901/ 2, 1932) within eighty years to showcase Cork and its assets on a national and international stage.

By 1931, Cork Corporation and business leaders, ten years on from the War of Independence, had invested much to reconstruct the city centre as the burning of Cork in December 1920 had destroyed many buildings. The resulting compensation the Corporation of Cork received for the damage to City Hall they chose to invest in trying to alleviate the poverty of one ninth of the city’s population, 2,400 families who lived in slum like conditions.  A total of 468 social housing units were constructed between 1926 and 1932 in Turners Cross. This was followed by the construction of a further 500 housing units in Gurranabraher. This vision was driven by Philip Monahan who served as City Commissioner and then as City Manager in Cork from 1924 to 1959. Philip Monahan did much to bring the city forward away from the horrors of the War of Independence and Civil War and to address the some of the pressing needs for social reform especially through the provision of social housing.

The need for reinvention though seems to echo through the general history of the early Free State. Dermot Keogh, retired Professor of History in UCC in his works on early years of the Free State, points to a country trying to return to normality and trying to nurture a calmer patriotism. Under the darkness of Michael Collins’s death and bitter memories of the civil war, the enormous task of state-building was begun by William T. Cosgrave and Cumann na nGaedheal. They put down the foundation stones for the establishment of a liberal democracy and of the institutions of the state – parliament, executive and judiciary.  They attempted to achieve rapid and radical social reform but international issues prevailed.

Emigration continued, 220,591 leaving Irish shore for the US between 1921 and 1930. Those numbers were reduced totally only when world depression hit in the late 1920s with the Wall Street stock market crash. The theme of emigration and the need to harness the assets of Ireland inspired the creation of the Irish Industrial and Agricultural Fair 1932 on Cork’s Lee Fields, which sought to benefit Ireland’s employment prospects and agricultural progress.

To be continued….

Captions:

562a. Front cover of catalogue of Cork Industrial Fair 1932 (source: Cork County Library)

562b. Lee Fields, 2010, from Cork County Hall (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article, Cork Independent,

 15 October 2010

In the Footsteps of St. Finbarre (Part 232)

Warfare, Disorganisation and Reconstruction

Whilst researching the death of Patrick Murphy in the Cork Examiner in the week following the Leemount incident of 14 September 1922, the researcher is exposed to other underlining historical narratives in the evolution of Cork in the early years of the Free State. These include the reconstruction of key infrastructure in the region and attempts to deal with rising poverty and unemployment and how proposed remedies affected.

Standing out in the press pages the trade of the city is presented as down. The agricultural community was ‘severely’ hindered owing to the condition of the country. Country markets were few and far between. Farmers were at the point of isolation owing to the dislocation of railways plus the many difficulties of road transport. The Cork Summer Show at the Cork Showgrounds had to be cancelled as exhibits could not be brought to Cork owing to impassibility of the roads and the dislocation of the railway services.  The argument is given by the Cork Examiner that many Irish industries in the south depended largely on their profits on the market which the Cork Agricultural Show supplied when farmers, cattle and others visited the city, inspected the latest and best that was to be seen and made extensive purchases of various kinds.

Trading was reduced to a minimum across the Cork region. With unsold goods, usual supplies were not ordered. The closure of post office services in the south because of proposed wage cuts led to the shutdown of telegraphs, telephones, postal and engineering. In addition the cutting of wires for Civil War purposes made Cork isolated from other centres in Ireland. An editorial in the Cork Examiner on the 12 September 1922 revealed that inland settlements in the south west were even harder hit. Shopkeepers of towns along the coast, as circumstances permitted, organised between fifty and sixty motor boats and steamers to ply between Cork City and the southern and western towns and villages including Limerick, Tralee, Kenmare, Goleen, Sneem, Cahirciveen, Skibbereen, Union Hall, Cape Clear, Sherkin, Schull, Castletownbere, Baltimore, Clonakilty, Bandon and Courtmacsherry. Cargoes, which arrived at the south jetties in Cork City in mid September 1922, comprised pigs, bacon, butter, eggs and fresh fish and the return of cargo consisting of flour, meal bran, groceries, salt and the products of local breweries and distilleries.

Debate was also carried in the council chamber of City Hall regarding the reconstruction of St. Patrick’s Street, a substantial portion of which had been burned out in mid December 1920. The journalist reporting on the Council meetings noted that a committee had been set up in Cork Corporation to engage and collect data and for the government, which was to be used in the compensation negotiations with the English government regarding the damage done to St. Patrick Street and the wear and tear of British trucks across the city’s streets.

A total of £300,000 had been advanced for the reconstruction of the street. The city solicitor noted that two investigators appointed by the Irish government and one by the British government had visited the city in the second week of August 1922. The British government representative was dealing with cases of damage done by their forces, which was the bulk of the damage in Cork City.  He made a promise of a cash payment to the decree holder i.e. Cork Corporation.

Coupled with this mechanism and it appears to muddle the compensation package available, an international body called the Compensation Commission (the Shaw Commission) had been set up, which was appointed for the express purpose of, amongst other things, reviewing awards already made in the cases of criminal injury applications not defended by a city or county Council. Cork Corporation in mid September 1922 was expecting the Shaw Commission to come to Cork. The minutes of the Corporation of Cork show the Council attempting to understand the two sources of compensation packages and the need to maximise any receipts of compensation packages.

Cork Corporation Council members pressed to harness the advance of £300,000 to provide much needed employment. An important decision was also taken to inform property owners within the destroyed area that the Corporation intended to enforce the byelaws with regard to the closure of temporary structures or timber walled shops. In the early part of 1921, they had emerged on the street and through good will from the Corporation had been allowed to stay but no legal right existed for their erection. A sub committee of the Corporation was to wait on the owners of property in the burnt out areas who had submitted plans for reconstruction work. The Corporation urged them to proceed with work. As a result of the Corporation’s plea, at the subsequent council meeting, the councillors were informed that six firms in the burnt out area were prepared to start rebuilding work. In several cases, traders informed the Corporation that tenders had been invited and in some cases works had already started. However it seems a large number of traders were not prepared to start. They were holding out to maximise any due compensation. Indeed it was to take another ten years before the new street emerged.

To be continued…

Captions:

561a. St. Patrick’s Street, c.1910 (pictures: Kieran McCarthy collection)

561b. St. Patrick’s Quay, Cork City c.1910

Kieran’s Article, Our City, Our Town,

Cork Independent – 7 October 2010

In the Footsteps of St. Finbarre (Part 231)

At the Sword of Light

The quest in the last couple of weeks to write about the heritage of War of Independence memorials, such as the Ballycanon one and that of the Patrick Murphy Civil War memorial, has led to a series of individuals and groups contacting me wishing to elaborate on and debate the historical record. Many have drawn on collective memories that have been passed down and have also presented primary and secondary sources on the topics I have explored in the column.

Recently, I met up with Des O’Grady, an avid local historian, with the Cork based Phoenix Historical Society. He and the society record the people and narratives attached to memorials remembering the Irish War of Independence and the Civil War. We met under the shadow of the iconically carved An Claidheamh Solais sculpture within the Republican Plot at St Finbarre’s Cemetery. This cemetery contains one of the largest burial plots of Irish Republicans who died in the course of the struggle for Irish freedom, most of them during the 1920s but there are some from the late twentieth century as well.

Des outlined his work and thoughts on Patrick Murphy, who is also buried within the plot and whose grave is marked by a stone cross. Patrick was from Model Farm Road at Ministers Cross and the ruin of the 2 storey house, where he was born and bred, can still be seen there. According to the 1911 census, his father was Thomas (a farmer) and his mother was Kate. Patrick was the second youngest in the family being 18 at the time of the census. His sisters were Anne Marie, Queenie and Helena whilst he had one brother Thomas.

Volunteer Patrick Murphy was a member of H Company, First Battalion, First Cork Brigade, Irish Republican Army. The company was formed circa 1917 and comprised members of volunteers living in Glasheen, Bishopstown, Western Road and westwards to Carrigrohane townland. During the War of Independence, the H-Company had failures and successes. In one instance at Ballynacarriga or Inchigaggin Bridge, in an attempt to secure gelignite, an explosive, using in quarries in the areas, they were outgunned by British troops and forced to retreat. In more successful attempts, they captured two British troop lorries at Dennehy’s Cross, Cork City and burned them out. They were also involved in attacks and the burning out of Royal Irish Constabulary police barracks at Bannow Bridge near the Angler’s Rest and at Victoria Cross respectively.

During the Civil War, Patrick took the republican side. The passed down collective memory of his life highlights that Patrick was active in a Flying Column operating in the Inniscarra/ Blarney are and was involved in several operations, including the blowing up of Bannow Bridge at Leemount four days before his death. He was also involved in the raid on the Muskerry Tram on 8 September, with the Flying Column, who were looking for Free State soldiers, who were working undercover in the area. After the column searched all the passengers and the mail bags, they discovered that a Free State agent, hired to kill Sean Mitchell, who was Officer in Command, would pass through the Leemount area at about 11.30am, the following morning. At the time the Free State agent was planning to infiltrate the column posing as an IRA man wishing to get in contact with the column to offer his services. (Countering the Cork Examiner view of the narrative) The Officer in Command, Sean Mitchell and Volunteer O’Sullivan, Patrick Murphy went to Lee Mount Cross on the 9^th September to arrest, disarm and interrogate the Free State agent. The gathering of Free State agents encountered opened fire on the latter persons. In the event, Patrick was shot in the stomach. He died of his wounds on 11 September, two days later in the Mercy Hospital.

Patrick Murphy’s grave lies perhaps in one of the most sacred of plots in Cork’s cemeteries, the Republican Plot but perhaps also one of the most contested of Cork’s historical spaces. Indeed it is difficult to write about this great space without encountering different arguments and debates on what traits and deeds of those who fought for Irish freedom should be remembered. However standing in the middle of the plot, I was impressed by the carved An Claidheamh Solais or the Sword of Light, which is also depicted on Patrick Murphy’s memorial and many others, connecting a large series of memorials together. The work in one sense recalls the work of Padraig Pearse, a signatory of the Irish Proclamation of Independence but also an enthusiastic member of the Gaelic League, He was also editor of the League’s newspaper An Claidheamh Solais (The Sword of Light). However, this narrative seems to also be transcended when one looks at this depiction of an ancient sword. Here is a memorial that also seems to carry much symbolism of the early historical journey of the Irish state, a society within a country who fought physically and emotionally with Britain and itself. In essence, here is a powerful sculpture linked to national identity, national memory and political agendas, all very important parts of Ireland’s cultural heritage.

My thanks to Des O’Grady for his patience, courtesy and contribution

To be continued…

Captions:

560a. Photograph of Patrick Murphy (picture: Phoenix Historical Society)

560b. Grave of Patrick Murphy, Republican Plot, St. Finbarre’s Cemetery, Cork (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town article,

Cork Independent, 30 September 2010

In the Footsteps of St. Finbarre (Part 230)

Hauntings, Open Wounds and Whispers

 “In Berlin, it was precisely the question of what ghosts should be invoked, what pasts should be remembered and forgotten, and through what forms, that led to heated public debates over what and where these places of memory should be. People made memorials, created historical exhibitions, dug up the past and went on tours to represent, confront, and ignore a violent national past and to define and forge possible national futures. They made places as open wounds in the city to remind them of their haunting and to feel uncomfortable” (Karen Till, 2005, The New Berlin, p. 11)

Karen Till’s work on the thought and effort that went into rebuilding Berlin in the aftermath of World War II and the debate over what should be remembered and forgotten tends to draw huge parallels to the Irish Civil War. The civil war is a crisis of Ireland’s turbulent past. The 4,000 deaths between the two opposing sides (including Patrick Murphy at Leemount) and the aftermath make for horrific reading in the present. W.T. Cosgrave in October 1922 enacted a Public Safety Bill, which allowed for the execution of anyone who was captured bearing arms against the state or aiding armed attacks on state forces. William  Cosgrave’s position was that a guerrilla war could drag on indefinitely, making the achievement of law and order and establishing the Free State impossible, if harsh action was not taken. His reputation suffered after he ordered the execution without trial of republican prisoners during the civil war. In all 77 republicans were executed by the Free State between November 1922 and the end of the war in May 1923. These actions left Irish society divided and embittered. Those actions seem to linger if you just scratch the surface to reveal the deeper roots of Ireland’s principal parties. Hence the civil war tends to be continuously spoken about in whispers, fears, concerns and perhaps in uncomfortable truths.

To Karen Till, Berlin is a place haunted with landscapes that simultaneously embody intentional forgetting and painful remembering. That because of Berlin’s traumatic past, the past never settles or neatly arranges itself in horizontal layers – that the past is always contested by those who want to remember it and those who want to forget. Indeed, memorials like those that exist in Berlin to recall the holocaust for instance may be interpreted in a number of ways. However, each memorial seems to attempt to contain the past and to build memory so to speak. This latter statement also becomes very apparent in DeValera’s government of the 1940s when he commissioned the construction of War of Independence memorials across the country.

There has also been much work completed by historians and geographers on the memories associated with roadside memorials. Standing next to the Patrick Murphy memorial, one quickly gets the impression that this is a memorial one is meant to pass and not stop. It may have been different when it was built originally. On reflection, the memorial seems to have multiple meanings, differing between those who built it, those that maintain it today (the Timothy Kennefick Memorial Group) and those like myself who try to stop and interpret what it is trying to remember. Indeed the truth of why Patrick Murphy was selected to be remembered is intriguing and seems to remain hidden – one reason is probably because of his youth that on one level the monument is a marker of his life or perhaps it is a marker of his sacrifice or maybe it is a marker of heroism or it remembers the exact opposite – it is a marker of flaws in Irish society – that the monument was put there as a reminder of a painful past and meant to be always some kind of open wound in the continuous  making of Irish history- or  the monument is to remind the viewer that a whole nation was divided and fought for by opposing sides.

The memorial is also not a conventional grieving space or site of mourning associated with grief practices. There is a lack of offerings – there are no statues, flowers or photographs. The only strong symbols used on the memorial are that of carved sword and cross. The overall site reclaims public space for the celebration of Patrick Murphy, the individual but one gets the impressions he represents a lot more people through the conventional image of the sword, which connects this monument to other monuments.

However, for the all the raw power of this monument, it seems to avoid any new debates on civil war monuments. The Patrick Murphy Civil War memorial seems to not reflect on aspects such human rights, democracy, equality, the renouncing of violence, guilt and /or responsibility. Or maybe it does but these traits are ones that one regularly does not hear about when such monuments are being discussed. As Ireland approaches the nineteenth anniversary of the start of the Irish Civil war in 2012, perhaps monuments such as these will create new possibilities for thinking about and how one can represent national belonging in the future. The other item that came to my mind standing at this site is the need for modern memorials in the Irish countryside and recent generations to leave a positive mark.                                                                                                                                  

To be continued….

Captions:

559a. Inscription on Patrick Murphy Memorial, Leemount (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

 559b. Members of the Cork no.1 Brigade Flying column (from left) Mick O’Sullivan, Patrick O’Sullivan & Sean Murray, summer 1921 (picture Fr. Patrick Twohig)