Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent,  9 April 2015

Cork Harbour Memories (Part 18)

Stories in Stone

   Staying with George Carew’s map of sixteenth century Muskerry (see last week), one of its concerns was the showing of castles and churches – his castles are marked with a circle and a dot whilst his churches are demarcated with a snowman type delineation. The dashed lines reflect fluctuating territorial lines between Gaelic families and Carew’s long list of allies and adversaries. The map also points to small woodland areas across the territory. Carew’s circled dots very much under represent the prominence of castles in the landscape. The majority were tall slender stone tower houses with an estate surrounding them. Many still stand as ruins, haunted in a sense by the human life that once drove survival and civilised structures in them. All are worthy of remark and all have been written about through the ages.

   The tower house at Kilcrea was built by Cormac MacCarthy in the mid fifteenth century and lies only a few miles from Cork City. In its heyday it provided a buffer area like Blarney Castle – that those who travelled west along the River Lee, knew they were entering retaken Gaelic territory. The name Kilcrea (Cill Chre) harks back to an earlier history and means the Cell of Cere, Cera or Cyra. St Cere, who lived in the sixth century. She is is said to have founded a nunnery about a mile east of the friary in the parish of St Owen’s, now called Ovens. It appears that Kilcrea was a location with ecclesiastical associations long before Cormac Láidir MacCarthy founded the Franciscan Friary there circa 1465 AD. The friary was dedicated to St Brigid of Kildare.

   A few fields west of the Franciscan Friary stands the impressive ruined tower house of Kilcrea. It was built by Cormac McCarthy, Lord of Muskerry and was situated nearly in the centre of the valley, within a short distance of the Bride. Although inferior in importance and size, to that of Blarney, it was and still is a considerable structure to walk around and explore in safety. John Windele, antiquarian, in his Historical and descriptive notices of the city of Cork and its vicinity (1839) eloquently describes the castle of Kilcrea as standing in isolation; ”the warrior pile, stands in stern loneliness, denuded of its circling woods, isolated and ruinous – a better taste may again restore to it some of its sylvan honours”.

   This abandoned “warrior pile” of blocks of limestone is like a complex jigsaw puzzle of stone and is well put together. This was a building made to last, made to be permanent. The stones are heavy – their weight now intertwining with the weight of history which now governs them. The quoin or corner stones and the material remains of mortar are testament to the masons who planned and put this prominent structure together. Its site is enclosed by a narrow moat still filled with water. The castle has a small fortified area at the eastern side of it, and is defended by curtain walls, and two square vaulted towers, now in ruins.

   Inside the keep, it is divided by two semi-circular stone arches (being turned on a kind of basket work of interwoven sallows, or willow wattles). One arch is above the other, at the heights of one third, and two thirds of the building. All of the intermediate floors have been destroyed. Stone corbels for timber floors remain to entice the visitor to think about creaking floor boards. The basement rooms like those at Blarney are merely lit by narrow loops. At the south side of the vestibule is a stair case, which consists of an easy flight of seventy-seven steps and runs up the entire height of the building, becoming spiral as it approaches the higher chambers. A number of small closets are attached to the upper rooms, all of which are vaulted.

           The upper chamber formed the main hall – a room of state and was at one time spacious and well lit. Its floor is now overgrown with grass. It was lit by three spacious windows, with stone mullons, and ogee headed tracery of a basic design – but enough to entice you to rub your hand over this ancient piece of art work. John Windele after his visit remarked that at the north side of the main hall chamber, was formerly a “capacious fire place with a well-executed mantle-piece, on the impost of which was an inscription, in raised letters commemorating rather modern repairs”. This was also removed some years before Windele’s visit and during my visit the missing fire-place was also quite apparent. From the ruined battlements is obtained an extensive view over the valley to the west, embracing the view of Castlemore and Cloghdha Castle near Crookstown.

   On my visit the hum of a nearby lawnmower seemed to bounce from wall to wall in the interior, making me look behind you at every corner. The structure is haunted by its stories and history. This haunting feeling is also one, which Windele also picked up upon; “it has been haunted by a phooka, or mischievous spirit, under the form of a black crow; so that nightly visitors would require strong nerves to brave the terrors of its lonely and forsaken chambers”.

To be continued…

Captions:

787a. Kilcrea tower house, March 2015 (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

787b. Interior of Kilcrea tower house, March 2015 (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

787c. Entrance arch and stairs, Kilcrea tower house, March 2015 (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article, 

Cork Independent, 2 April 2015

Cork Harbour Memories (Part 17)

Carew’s Campaigns

    George Carew’s impact on the cultural and political landscape of Munster was vast. By the spring of 1586 Carew had been knighted and was sent on a private mission by Elizabeth I to Ireland. Carew arrived into a country where huge tracts of the Earl of Desmond’s lands in Munster had taken over by the English crown. About 300,000 acres of land were confiscated in total. From 1585, the plantation of Munster had began and new English settlers were given land. As a reward to Carew’s loyalty, he acquired large estates.

   Carew’s rise in political circles and in English power structures in Ireland was quick. In February 1588 Carew was appointed Master of the Ordnance, and returned to Ireland. In 1590 he was admitted to the Privy Council. Two years later in 1592 he was made Lieutenant-General of the English Ordnance, and in 1596 and 1597 he was engaged with Essex and Raleigh in expeditions against Spain. In March 1599 he was appointed to attend the Earl of Essex to Ireland and on 27 January 1600 he was made President of Munster.

    Carew’s proceedings for the next three years during his term as President are carefully detailed in Pacata Hibernia (1633), nominally written by Thomas Stafford, but inspired by himself. The Battle of Kinsale features prominently in his pages on campaigns in Cork. On 23 September, 1601, a Spanish fleet entered the harbour of Kinsale with 3,400 troops in forty-four vessels under the command of Don Juan del Aguila. They immediately took possession of the walled town. Del Aguila despatched a message to Ulster to O’Neill and O’Donnell to come south without delay. Lord Mountjoy and Carew mustered their forces, and at the end of three weeks encamped on the north side of Kinsale with an army of 12,000 men.

    O’Neill arrived on 21 December 1601 with an army of about 4,000, and encamped at Belgooly north of Kinsale, about three miles from the English lines. His advice was, not to attack the English, but to let their army suffer from the cold. Already 6,000 of them had perished. But he was overruled in a council of war, and a combined attack of Irish and Spaniards was arranged for the night of 3 January, 1602. Efforts to rally his ranks were in vain. Del Aguila’s attack did not come off and the Irish lost the battle of Kinsale. Soon after the battle Del Aguila surrendered the town. He agreed also to give up the castles of Baltimore, Castlehaven, and Dunboy, which were garrisoned by Spaniards. Shortly afterwards, he returned to Spain.

    The Dunboy Castle though was not given up without a fight. In April 1602 Carew took Dunboy Castle and estate, which was the stronghold of the O’Sullivan Bere clan and built to guard the harbour of Berehaven. The O’Sullivan Beres controlled the fishing fleets off the Irish coast and became rich through the collection of taxes on the rights of passage. Dunboy was surrendered to the Spaniards, on their invasion of Ireland in 1601 by its owner, Daniel O’Sullivan. Early the following year following the treaty at Kinsale the Irish clan took possession of the castle by surprise and seized the arms and ammunition the Spaniards had deposited there. Sir George Carew as well as 5000 soldiers were sent to suppress the O’Sullivan Bere. In April, the English army marched against the O’Sullivans to Bantry, and on 6 June set up camp on the opposite side of the castle’s bay.

     Dunboy Castle was considered impregnable and was only defended by 143 men under the command of Richard McGeoghegan. It took two weeks to take it during which it was almost destroyed by artillery fire. After hand to hand fighting the remaining 58 survivors were executed in the town square. The entire castle site lay in ruins until 1730 when the Puxley family were granted the Dunboy Estate along as well as other land belonging to the O’Sullivan’s. They then set about building a mansion close to the Puxley Castle keep and Dunboy Castle was left in ruins. Very little now remains of the old castle. It now comprises of just a few collections of stones which in parts are almost completely covered with overgrowth.

   The end of the Cork wars found the country in a deplorable condition of ruin and depopulation. Carew and the other English leaders, and their Irish allies, profited largely by the confiscations that ensued. Carew returned to England in March 1602 at the earnest request of his friend Cecil. Carew stood in as high favour with King James I as with Elizabeth, and in the Irish Patent Rolls are recorded the numerous grants bestowed on him from time to time. In 1605 he was created Baron Carew, and was made Governor of Guernsey. In 1611 he was again despatched to Ireland as head of the commission for the plantation of Ulster.

   The favour which followed him through the reigns of Elizabeth and James continued unabated under Charles I, by whom he was created Earl of Totnes. Much of his later years were spent in arranging his invaluable collection of papers connected with the history of Ireland. Carew died at the Savoy, London, 27 March 1629, aged about 72, and was buried at Stratford-upon-Avon. He left one daughter. His Countess survived him many years.

To be continued…

Captions:

786a. Map of Siege of Dunboy, late sixteenth century as depicted in Sir George Carew’s Pacata Hibernia, or History of The Wars in Ireland (1633), vol. 2, opp page 191.

786b. Ruins of Dunboy Castle, present day (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 26 March 2015

Cork Harbour Memories (Part 16)

A Map of Muskerry

     In late sixteenth-century Cork guardsmen at the top of Blarney Castle commanded a very fine view over a rich undulating landscape intersected by the River Blarney, and other streams, and bounded on the north-west by the lofty chain of the Boggeragh Mountains, and a view extending back the Lee Valley catchment area. It is difficult to imagine their world and how highly contested the landscapes of the region were amongst English and Irish families. A glance at a map called Map of Muskerry from the book Pacata Hibernia (1633) shows the extent of territorial control by English and Irish families. Castles abound the map.

    From first view, it is a beautiful hand drawn map of the Lee Valley and its catchment area. The River Lee takes centre focus as the cartographer bends his representation to a west-east axis extending from the walled town of Cork as the base. The river is presented as an integral feature around which territory is defined. The river and its tributaries create what in an abstract way looks like a tree on which the memories of the families and their dwellings extend out from. Today it is perhaps the Cork-Macroom national routeway that takes precedence in this part of the valley despite the rich beauty of places such as Farran, Carrigadrohid and Canovee.

    The map is insightful but a complex piece in the arbitration of identity and place in the region. It is an English-made map to control territory. The map had a huge role to play in identifying the political fault lines and landscapes in the catchment area. You can feel the tension in this drawn landscape. It is a highly politicised map, dramatic in its content through its shadings and lines – highly contested – a labyrinth of hidden meanings. It is accurate in much of its general detail. Every important corner is depicted, representations of crossing points of rivers, castles of English and Irish families and churches. Both the latter are gathering points for communities and have their own power structures – all controlling the local communities who engaged with them. The scenery drawn in it such as mountains and rivers add to the representation in lending to where territory starts and ends. The map reveals the extent of Irish landholdings – and how prominent families such as the McCarthys, O’Donovans, O’Keeffes and O’Sullivans were to the main English stronghold of the walled town of Cork and its harbour. The Barrys and the Roches seem to be the last bastions of old Anglo-Norman English families at the base of the map, who act a buffer zone between the town of Cork and its hinterland.

    The map is rooted in a wider political context and appears in the published papers of Sir George Carew. Pacata Hibernia: or A History of the Wars in Ireland During the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (originally titled Pacata Hibernia, Ireland appeased and reduced; or, an historie of the late warres of Ireland) was first published in London in 1633. It offers Carew’s contemporary account of affairs in Ireland during the latter stages of the Nine Years War, as well as details on the conduct of the campaign in Munster. It is owing to Carew’s history-making ambition that the Munster wars are detailed. He instructed Thomas Stafford, his nephew, a young officer in his army, to record what he saw during the campaign and himself supplied him with valuable correspondence.

     National biographies of Carew detail that he was Earl of Totnes (a market town and parish in Devon), a soldier and a statesman. He was born in 1558, probably at Exeter. After studying at Oxford, he and his brother Peter came over to Ireland in 1575 under the patronage of their kinsman Sir Peter Carew. After Sir Peter’s death, both of the brothers are mentioned as being engaged in the Irish wars. They appear as captains of a company of Devon and Cornishmen who landed at Waterford in 1579, and were afterwards appointed to keep the Castle of Adare, where they were besieged by the Earl of Desmond. Peter was slain in a sally, on 25 August 1580.

     In 1580, a rebellion began in Munster against Queen Elizabeth. Many of the families who lived there, such as the Fitzmaurices, hoped to get help from the Catholic king of Spain to defeat Queen Elizabeth. The Earl of Desmond, Fitzgerald, did not put down the rebellion and was declared a traitor by the agents of the queen. His estate lands were burned and his tenants were killed. The Earl’s castles were also taken. In June 1584, a commission under Sir Valentine Browne surveyed southwest Munster, mapping out the lands belonging to a swathe of Irish lords associated with the rebellion, which were then granted to a small group of wealthy English Undertakers. The MacCarthy Mór clan, for example, lords of most of modern Cork and Kerry, declined to join the Fitzgerald rebellion and as a result they were spared the destruction that ultimately befell much of the rest of Munster, and avoided confiscation in plantation – hence the large tracts shown on the map of Muskerry belonging to Irish families.

To be continued…

As part of the Lifelong Learning Festival, Kieran will give a talk on Cork in the 1920s and 1930s in the Cork City and County Archives in Blackpool at 2.30pm on Friday 27 March (free, all welcome).

Caption:

785a. Portrait of Sir George Carew (picture: Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Stratford-upon-Avon).

785b. Map of Muskerry, late sixteenth century as depicted in Sir George Carew’s Pacata Hibernia, or History of The Wars in Ireland (1633), vol. 2, opp page 267.

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article

Cork Independent, 12 March 2015

Cork Harbour Memories (Part 14)

Eloquent War Councils at Blarney

   The halls of Blarney Castle by the sixteenth century witnessed its fair share of war councils. Rough maps spread on the castle’s central hall table, plotted territory held and tensions and conflicts at play in the Munster region. In our time we can only imagine these worlds of conflict and negotiation. Feuds between rivals the Fitzgeralds and the MacCarthys were on-going and long-standing. These events were punctuated by rebellions against the wider sovereign power. Tales of punishment dished out on all sides in the history books show the extent of legend making and mythologising of this violent period in Irish history. Indeed trying to read up on the multiple genealogies of the MacCarthys, you’re left wondering what is true and what is exaggerated but all are a fascinating read. Even the famous stone of eloquence emerges from the power of this mix of histories and myth, with no one story defining its origins.

  In the year 1521, the head of the Fitzgeralds, James Earl of Desmond, burst with a powerful force into Muskerry. He ravaged, burnt and destroyed the territory until Cormac Oge MacCarthy led out an army against them. Cormac summoned the neighbouring chieftains to his assistance, pursued and overtook the Earl near Mourne Abbey, and inflicted on him what is described by scribes of the day a “severe chastisement”. It was after this that in 1528, Comac Oge attended Parliament as “Lord of Muscry [Muskerry]”.

  The MacCarthys managed to hold their own during the sixteenth century, saved from the fate of the Desmonds, whose vast territories of over half a million acres were confiscated at the close of the century. In 1542, Teige MacCarthy, the eleventh Lord of Muskerry was one among eight chieftains of the country who made an “indenture of submission” to the crown, in which they agreed to refer all disputes between themselves to a commission of arbitration appointed for Munster, and consisting of the Bishops of Cork and Waterford, instead of appealing to the Brehon law or civil law judges of the region.

   In the 1570s, the fourteenth Lord of Muskerry, Sir Cormac McTeige MacCarthy was rewarded for his allegiance. He kept his lands and received large grants of confiscated property. The lord had access to up to 3,000 men. Sir Cormac consented to adopt the royal device for passing down family property – surrender of his lands including Carrignamuck in Dripsey into the hands of the sovereign and to receive the same back by a re-grant. The crown rent was two hawks or £6 13s. 4d.

   Shortly after the re-granting, on 4 August 1580, Sir James Sussex Fitzgerald, youngest brother of the Earl of Desmond, made one of a series of regular attacks hoping to rob cattle from the barony of Muskerry. Donal MacCarthy, the Lieutenant of Carrignamuck, assembled an army and attacked and completely defeated Sir James, with the loss of 150 of his men. Sir James was mortally wounded in the fight and was captured by a black­smith, who hid him in a bush till the fight was ended, and then delivered him. Sir Cormac ordered the confinement of James in Carrigadrohid Castle, three miles to the south west of Carrignamuck. Soon after, the captive was surrendered to Sir Warham St Leger, Com­missioner for Munster, who had him tried for treason. Sir James on his conviction was executed. His head and limbs were affixed to one of the drawbridges that led into the walled town of Cork. Donal, the lieutenant, was also mortally wounded in this action, by an arrow which struck him under the right ear, and penetrated six inches into his neck. He died some time after.

   Donal’s death raised the next brother, Callaghan, then of Castlemore to the title of fifteenth Lord of Muskerry. A year later in 1585, Callaghan had passed the lordship to his nephew Cormac Mór MacDermod MacCarthy. In 1588, Cormac attended the English parliament as Baron of Blarney and because of the unsettled political nature In Ireland in the following year he surrendered his lands and to the crown and obtained a re-grant.

   Fast forward to Charles II, in 1658, he conferred the title of Earl of Clancarthy on the head of this family, the last of whom was dispossessed after the siege of Limerick. Hence the estate, comprising all Muskerry and its castles, were forfeited to the crown for the earl’s adherence to the cause of James II. On the sale of the forfeited lands in 1692, the Hollow Sword Blade Company purchased all the land around this place, and more than 3000 acres in the parish were allotted to a member of the Company, and were held by his descendant, George Putland, Esq., of Dublin. Blarney Castle was purchased in 1701 by Sir James Jefferies, Governor of Cork, who soon after erected a large and handsome house in front of it, which was the family residence for many years. Complete with a mythic stone of eloquence, the story of the MacCarthys took a new course especially as the late nineteenth century progressed and the rise of mass tourism to the castle began.

To be continued…

Kieran’s new book, Cork Harbour Through Time (with Dan Breen) is now available in Cork bookshops.

Caption:

783a. Blarney Castle, Present Day (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

783b. Recounting the legend of the stone, mid twentieth century postcard at Blarney Castle (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent,  26 February 2015

Cork Harbour Memories (Part 12)

– Medieval Pomp: Bread Checks and Dart Throwing

       The charters granted to Cork in the Middle Ages created many of the traditions this city still participates in today. Following on from last week, in constructing an identity for the walled town of Cork, Edward II’s charter dated 20 July, 1318 confirmed previous charters and encouraged pomp and ceremony for the election of a mayor. The charter noted that the elected mayor could be sworn before his predecessor in Cork, instead of going to Dublin for the purpose of taking an oath before the Barons of the Exchequer.

     Edward II’s large debts (many inherited) and the Scots’ victory at Bannockburn by Robert the Bruce in 1314 made Edward unpopular. Edward’s victory in a civil war (1321-2) and such methods as the 1326 ordinance (a protectionist measure which set up compulsory markets or staples in 14 English, Welsh and Irish towns for the wool trade) did not lead to any compromise between the King and the nobles. His new regulatory frameworks perhaps also aimed to empower townspeople and those he governed. Such protectionist measures he rolled out in Cork some years previously in the 1318 charter to Cork. It granted to the mayor and bailiffs the assize of bread, which regulated the price, weight and quality of bread, and certain other unrecorded privileges usual in charters of that period. It is the first mention of the regulation of the production of food in the historic records.

        The charters of 1330, 1331 and 1381 reconfirmed previous ones. Fast forward to the next one granted by Edward IV dated 1 December, 1462 and it states that the Mayor and Commonalty took taxation from eleven parish churches in the city and in the wider suburbs. The churches paid a rent of 80 marks annually to the Crown, so long as the suburbs remained undestroyed. A comment was made that in the 1410s, the suburbs had been attacked by what is described as “Irish enemies and English rebels”. The churches were unable to pay their rent and the town paid the taxation to the crown for them. The churches were to pay back their arrears, and were responsible for part payment for maintaining the walls until peace was restored to a one mile circumference of the walled town.  

    The hills and valleys of County Cork were not Edward IV’s only worry. In the wider context two years earlier to the Cork charter in 1460 on the death of his father and brother, in contest for the throne, at Sandal Castle, Wakefield, Edward inherited from his father the Yorkist claim to England’s throne. Edward proved to be an able general, defeating the Lancastrians in February 1461 after which he was proclaimed king in London. He achieved a further decisive victory over the Lancastrians in Yorkshire, on 29 March, Palm Sunday. Fought in a snowstorm, it was to be the bloodiest battle of the Wars of the Roses, with casualties reported to be in the region of 28,000. The victorious Edward, then aged nineteen years of age made a state entry into London in June and was crowned King of England at Westminster.

    Fast forward again and the interest in securing the wider Cork region by the English monarchy especially Cork Harbour was revealed in Henry VII’s charter, dated 1 August 1500. Henry VII ended the dynastic wars known as the Wars of the Roses, founded the Tudor dynasty and modernised England’s government and legal system.The waters of a harbour like Cork was an English highway to move goods, people and ideas around. For Cork Henry confirmed all former charters, and further granted that the Mayor and citizens, and their successors, could enjoy their franchises within the city, the suburbs, and every part of the harbour. The charter reveals the extent of land to be the metropolitan area in a sense in Cork Harbour; “As far as the shore, point, or strand called Rewrawne, on the western part of the said port, and as far as to the shore point or strand of the sea, called Benowdran, on the eastern part of the same port, and as far as the castle of Carrigrohan, on the western side of the said City and in all towns, pills, creeks, burgs, and strands in and to which the sea ebbs and flows in length and breadth within the aforesaid two points, called Rewrawne and Benowdran” (better known by their modern names of Cork Head and Poer Head).

    In time and arising out of the Mayor having jurisdiction over the harbour the ancient ceremony of Throwing the Dart emerged. It is unknown when the ceremony began – maybe circa 1610 – a similar ceremony began in Limerick 1609 and Waterford in 1626. The earliest written record of the custom of claiming the waters in Cork is to be found amongst the archives of the Corporation and transcribed in a very insightful book by Richard Caulfield, entitled the Council Book of the Corporation of Cork published in 1876. Under the date of 30 May 1759, the mayor sought the arrangement of entertainment at Blackrock Castle and he, his officers and Corporation were to go to the mouth of Cork Harbour for the dart ceremony.

To be continued…

Kieran’s new book, Cork Harbour Through Time (with Dan Breen) is now available in Cork bookshops.

Caption:

781a. Throwing the Dart ceremony with Mayor and officials, mouth of Cork Harbour, 1855 (source: Illustrated London News, Vol. 26, 1855, p.531, 2 June 1855)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article, 

Cork Independent, 19 February 2015

Cork Harbour Memories (Part 11) –Charters and Governance

      If Cork’s maritime connections in medieval times created financial profit and a basis for a settlement, the idea of Cork as a civilised place, a civitas, or a social body of the citizens united by law, was as important. The last few weeks, the column looked at Bordeaux, Lisbon and Southampton to try and tease out an idea that places such as Cork developed in the context of larger maritime traditions and collective ideas of how to be an urban entity. The granting of charters also influenced the walled town’s progressive nature as part of the Anglo-Norman colony. Charters wove new rules and regulations, bye-laws in one sense, for citizens to follow.

      Between the years 1185 and 1900, Cork received no less than seventeen charters. These official records were legally binding. Many were reactions to what was going on within the wider Anglo-Norman colonies at a point in time. The politics, ambitions and interests of various kings who aspired to advance aspects of his governance were also significant. Many encompassed laws that were also brought to bear on other English settlements. In medieval times charters encompassed ideas of controlling those who lived within fortresses such as Cork. Cork charters influenced laws to improve the town walls, augment powers of mayors, carve up living space within the town, make new trading laws and establish new taxation laws. All tried as well to ease tensions amongst citizens, who felt disillusioned with the elite and other reckonings such as the deals struck with Gaelic Irish families to keep them in check. Many of the concessions embodied in these charters contributed in no small measure to build up the confidence and the identity of the city.

     The first Charter granted to the town of Cork appears to have been one from Prince John in the year 1185. It was his brother Richard (the Lionheart) who sent him to Ireland to rule, whilst he was pursuing the Crusades. In time to keep his French barons from rebelling, John increased taxes in the territories he ruled and signed the Magna Carta in 1215 to keep his English barons happy. The 1185 granted to the citizens of Cork gave the same free laws and free customs as the citizens of Bristol enjoyed. It confirmed to the citizens of Cork all their enclosures of land to them and their heirs being entitled to free laws and customs as well. The walled town was to have as part of its functions, that of a fortress. In the early days of the Anglo Norman colony in Ireland, the interest was in securing the land won.

    The next charter was granted by Henry III, dated 2 January, 1242, which focussed on raising taxation from citizens. Twelve years previously, in 1230, the King had attempted to re-conquer the provinces of France that had once belonged to his father, but the invasion was a debacle. In a fresh attempt to reclaim his family’s lands in France, he invaded Poitou in 1242, leading to the disastrous Battle of Taillebourg. All these campaigns cost money – hence unpopular taxes were raised across many towns and feudal estates. The Cork charter of 1242 granted to the citizens the right to hold the City of Cork with its holdings in fee farm, at a rent of four score marks, to be paid annually at the Exchequer. It further granted that citizens and their heirs could have all the duties on wine and the money arising from them providing a certified document was created showing that shippers did pay their dues. The taxation net also encompassed nearby creeks and strands. There was special provision made for some citizens who did not have to pay tolls, customs and for quay space. The head of the Corporation is in this charter is described as the “Provost”.

     A series of other confirmatory charters followed – Edward I, dated 12 June, 1291. Edward I’s charter dated 13 October, 1303 granted murage grants or grants towards defences to the “bailiffs and men of Cork” for a period of six years. The same grant was given to other towns in Ireland for a similar time. Edward I, nicknamed “Longshanks” due to his great height and stature, was one of the most successful of the medieval monarchs. Edward made great strides in reforming government, consolidating territory, and defining foreign policy. He negotiated a peace with France in 1303 and retained those areas that England held before the war. He introduced a Parliament in Dublin and increased commerce in a few coastal towns, but most of the country was controlled by independent barons or Celtic tribal chieftains. Hence defences were important – hence why Cork’s walls and the walls of other towns were granted funding.

    Eroded by the tide and by the run of the river, the walls of Cork would have had to be regularly maintained by the city’s stone masons. The recent excavation book on South Gate Bridge carpark (edited by Maurice Hurley and Ciara Brett) revealed the base of a random rubble town wall construction on timber beams and compacted sand and gravel sitting balanced into the underlining swamp. There were disparities in the fabric of the wall found implying a considerable amount of rebuilding of the upper coarses of the wall.

To be continued…

Kieran’s new book, Cork Harbour Through Time (with Dan Breen) is now available in Cork bookshops.

Caption:

780a. Effigy on tomb of Prince John in Worchester Cathedral (source: Cork City Library)

780b. Effigy on tomb of Henry III in Westminster Abbey

780c. Early fourteenth-century manuscript showing Edward I and his wife Eleanor

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article, 

Cork Independent, 12 February 2015

Cork Harbour Memories (Part 10)

– Cork’s Medieval Woollen Trade

      Apart from large tracts of wine imports into the walled town of Cork in the thirteenth century other imports included various cloths of English and French origin. Foreign spices and vegetables were also imported for consumption amongst the English and native Irish. The ports involved in the latter comprised Bristol, Carlisle, Pembroke and Southampton. Italian Merchant Companies brought in pepper and onions.

     The construction of Cork history has a habit (probably like elsewhere as well) to reduce Cork’s international connections to just lists. Mining into the cities that Cork was connected with does show allow a way of reflecting more on the energy, drive and forces at work in maintaining a city and its urbanity. It would great to go back in a time machine to see the human stories playing out in our city on a swamp. I have always felt that many of Cork’s missing historical jigsaw pieces are to be viewed elsewhere – in the thirteenth century Cork was part of a necklace of North Atlantic cities through which an Anglo-Norman colonies rose, expanded and in time eventually contracted.

    On Cork’s import records, Southampton features alot. In the thirteenth century, Southampton’s offering to Cork was wool. My own research led me to visit this southern English port city of the sea. Much of its medieval heritage was destroyed during World War II – so only bits and pieces of medieval towers, walls and churches survive. With a trip to Southampton library one can trace the development of the city through maps. Size-wise, its medieval town was about Cork’s size. Prominent in the old medieval town and a building that has survived the test of time is one of the old wool houses. The Wool House on Town Quay, which is more than 600 years old, built in 1417, was closed in 2011 and the artefacts moved to the new SeaCity Museum. In the last year, campaigners have criticised the local Council’s decision to approve plans to turn Southampton’s former Maritime Museum into a pub and micro-brewery – one of the description emerged was that it was an emblematic building of the city’s history. Emblematic was a word that stuck with me during my visit that goods can become emblems of a colony and its identity and ultimately legacy.

     History plaques in Southampton’s old medieval core reveal that the wool trade reached its height in the thirteenth century and a majority of townspeople derived their income from it. Southampton’s location was ideal, near to the sheep rearing districts of Hampshire and the Wiltshire Downlands. There are many works on medieval trade in England by scholars. Eileen Power who pioneered the study of the wool trade in Medieval England way back in 1941, a study which many scholars refer to, reveals that wool was an emblem of many aspects of society – control over the land and the construction of social class. England was for a great part of the Middle Ages the largest and most important source of fine wool gave her a key position. The barons of England in 1297 roundly stated that the wool of England amounts to half the value of the whole land. The merchant Ordinance of the Staple called it the “sovereign merchandise” and “jewel of this realm of England”.

    Welsh and Irish wool was imported, but it was coarser, and in some manufactures the use of Irish wool was prohibited. A good part of the Italian cloth industry and almost the whole of the industry of the Low Countries depended on English wool. The English nation, from king to peasant, was intensely wool-conscious and wool helped in its own way in the construction of social hierarchies and identities. The English economy, society and government responded, each in its own way, to variations in the wool trade – its ebb and flow, its shifting associations with the crown, and its continually changing organisation. A wool tax was one of the primary new sources of royal revenue at the end of the thirteenth century.

    Perhaps sheep were also an emblem of landscape control and transformation in any physical environment. The short-woolled sheep was the native of poor pastures, hills, moors and downs. It was found on the Welsh and Scottish borders, Yorkshire moors and chalk downlands of the South. The long-woolled sheep belongs to rich grasslands, marshes and fens in the midlands of England. The Midland wools formed a middle grade, and the chalk downlands of South and South-East England produced mainly coarser grades. Those of Devon and Cornwall, which were too coarse for the foreign market, were not exported at all. Statistics of all the demesne livestock for the four Eastern Counties (Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Cambridgeshire) and the four Western counties (Cornwall, Devon, Somerset and Dorset) and for one great monastery, Ely Abbey – eight shires – carried some 292,000 demesne sheep. Records for the years 1310–11 record English exports of 35,509 sacks of wool with a percentage of that arriving through King’s and Queen’s Castle of Cork’s medieval docks for sale and distribution.

 To be continued…

 Kieran’s new book, Cork Harbour Through Time (with Dan Breen) is now available in Cork bookshops.

Caption:

 779a. Romanticised view of Southampton, c.1450 (source: Southampton City Council)

 779b. Remains of one of the Medieval entrance gates, Southampton (picture: Kieran McCarthy)