Category Archives: Cork History

Kieran’s Historical Tours of Fitzgerald’s Park and Old Line

Cork City Events, Cork History, Kieran's Council Work, Landscapes, Uncategorized, Ward Events

 

As part of Cork’s Culture Night on Friday 19 September, Cllr Kieran McCarthy will conduct a walking tour of Fitzgerald’s Park and its environs (new tour, 5pm, free, meet at Park stage, approx 1 hour). The park’s entrance pillars on the Mardyke, the Lord Mayor’s Pavilion, the museum, the fountain in the middle of the central pond dedicated to Fr Mathew and timber posts eroding in the river were once part of one of Cork’s greatest historical events, the Cork International Exhibitions of 1902 and 1903. Just like the magical spell of Fitzgerald’s Park, the exhibitions were spaces of power. Revered, imagined and real spaces were created. They were marketing strategies where the past, present and future merged, Aesthetics of architecture, colour, decoration and lighting were all added to the sense of spectacle and in a tone of moral and educational improvement. The entire event was the mastermind of Cork Lord Mayor Edward Fitzgerald, after whom the park got its name.

 

Interested in finding out more on the Old Cork-Blackrock and Passage Railway Line and its connection to Cork Harbour? Cllr Kieran McCarthy will conduct a tour of the city side of the old line on Saturday evening, 20 September starting at 6.30pm at the entrance on The Marina side adjacent the Main Drainage station of the Amenity Walk. The tour is free (approx 1 1/2 hours, as part of Cork Harbour Open Day) and is open to all. South east Cork City is full of historical gems; the walk not only talks about the history of the line but also the history of the villages and harbour that surround the old line itself.

 

The Cork Blackrock and Passage Railway, which opened in 1850, was among the first of the Irish suburban railway projects. The original terminus, designed by Sir John Benson was based on Victoria Road but moved in 1873 to Hibernian Road. The entire length of track between Cork and Passage was in place by April 1850 and within two months, the line was opened for passenger traffic. In May 1847, low embankments, which were constructed to carry the railway over Monarea Marshes (Albert Road-Marina area), was finished. In Blackrock, large amounts of material were removed and cut at Dundanion to create part of the track there. Due to the fact that the construction was taking place during the Great Famine, there was no shortage of labour. A total of 450 men were taken on for the erection of the embankments at the Cork end of the line. Another eighty were employed in digging the cutting beyond Blackrock. These and other stories feature on Kieran’s tour.

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article, 4 September 2014

Cork History, Kieran's Council Work, Uncategorized

758a. Sean Lemass on Time magazine, 1963

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 4 September 2014

“Technical Memories (Part 87) – A Country Renewed”

 

It was a time of significant change and transformation, culturally and physically in 1950s and 1960s Cork. The last number of weeks has focussed on a number of ‘heavy’ industrial monuments in the region. Sites have been discussed to illuminate Cork’s role in the industrial expansion of Ireland – Whitegate Oil Refinery, Haulbowline Steel Holdings, Verolme Shipyard, ESB Stations, Gouldings Fertilisers, Cork Airport, Fords, Dunlops, developments on Tivoli’s docks, as well as the revamp of the city’s docks.

The Cork sites were encouraged in their development by government through their policy documents. However the Cork industries also bucked the trend moving ahead of the national development curve with great leadership behind them. Between 1945 and 1973, Ireland moved from being a largely agricultural to one increasingly complex global framework.  Ireland could attract mobile capital from national companies. During his tenure as Taoiseach from 1959 to 1966, Sean Lemass of Fianna Fáil focussed on the provision of additional exports, the creation of new export markets and the generation of further employment.  It was also recognised that to acquire expansions various social actors had to be brought together, particularly the trade unions, business interests and farmers’ groups into the economic policy-making process.

A book entitled The Lemass Era (2005) edited by Brian Given and Gary Murphy outlines that between 1951 and 1958, gross domestic product rose by less than one per cent per year. Employment fell by 12 per cent, and the unemployment rate rose. Industrial output expanded at 2.8 per cent yearly while output per farmer grew at a respectable 3.4 per cent due to economic policy reform. However by 1960 the average British worker still earned at least forty per cent more than his Irish counterpart. This low salary structure served as a strong incentive for Irish skilled workers to emigrate even when not threatened by unemployment. Despite industrial progress, Irish Domestic Product was still only 60 per cent of the Western European average. The process of post-war recovery was characterised by intensive industrialisation and the development of a strong export potential. Ireland was on the periphery in both an economic and political sense.

In 1958 T K Whitaker, secretary of the Department of Finance, penned a policy document, entitled Economic Development. Within its introduction, he commented on eliminating restrictive economic policies; “we can no longer rely for industrial development on extensive tariff and quota protection. Foreign industrialists will bring skills and techniques we need, and continuous and widespread publicity abroad is essential to attract them. If foreign industrial investment does not rapidly increase, a more radical removal of statutory restrictions on such investments should take place”. Whitaker outlined two ways to attract foreign corporations: remove restrictions and give incentives for foreign firms to establish bases in Ireland. He suggested that the Control of Manufactures Acts of 1932 and 1934 should be amended and a series of proposals intended to attract outside investors to Ireland should be activated.

Whitaker proposed that the IDA should expand its staff, particularly in North America, and should strengthen and advance its efforts to attract foreign capital. He further recommended that the available capital be increased for outright industrial grants, which  would increase the country’s productive capacity and bring new techniques and methods. Ireland had to become more efficient so that its products could be sold on an increasing scale in export markets. A white paper was drafted from Whitaker’s report with a number of actions solidified. In time, Lemass changed the title of the new act from a “Repeal of the Control of Manufactures Act” to an “Act for the Encouragement of Export”. 

The white paper by the government on Whitaker’s work was published in 1958. This document ushered in an era of official commitment to some form of economic planning. It played a key role in redirecting government thinking and in preparing the way for new economic policies of the 1960s. Lemass completed the process of putting in place a substantial industrial support structure, covering technology, exporting and support for firms such as the IDA. In the same year, Ireland made its first application for membership in the European Economic Community in 1961. 

The first programme covered the years 1959 to 1963. In 1961 during the period of this programme, the volume of GNP rose by over four per cent a year, which was faster than any of the projections put forward in 1958.  Not only did living standards rise by 50 per cent, by 1971, the population had risen by over 100,000. This is also reflected in the suburban expansion of cities across the country and the construction of new houses. In the Cork context, it led to the city’s first development plan in 1969 with a proposed spend of £30m on development and redevelopment and enormous foci on the provision of social housing, drainage and new road structures. Millions more were proposed to be spent on a new regional hospital and a new regional technical college (more on this next week).   

If anyone has stories of attending the Crawford Tech in the 1960s, I would like to hear them.  Unfortunately I lost some phone numbers, so I’d appreciate any info and photos on the Tech, 0876553389.

Caption:

758a. Seán Lemass on Time magazine, 1963 (source: Cork City Library)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 28 August 2014

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

757a. Map of Dunlops plant, Centre Park Road, Cork, 1960 before expansion

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town,

Cork Independent, 28 August 2014

“Technical Memories (Part 86) – Dunlops of the 1960s

 

“It is obvious that Cork in general and Dunlops and Fords, in particular do not fully share the views of a depressed future for our car-building industry. A very high percentage of Dunlop’s business is supplying original equipment to the assembly industry. All but a tiny fraction of the new vehicles have their wheels shod by tyres made in Cork. In any trading arrangement, which envisages completed cars being imported here with tyres already fitted of course, the consequences must be very serious for Dunlop” (journalist, Irish Press, 15 November, 1965, p.6).

With a £2m capital outlay for expansion revealed by the Irish Dunlop Company in early November 1965, two new giant industrial blocks were to be built in Dublin and Cork. The new office block at Cork comprised 48,000 square feet, spanning across six storeys and sitting on 130 piles into the Centre Park Road swamp. The new and modern-marketed building was to dominate the Marina Estate soaring over the one storey factory units. Irish materials were used in its construction. The Dunlops space was designed so that a computer centre, Cork’s first commercial computer, could occupy the whole of the ground floor. The proposed research staff were to be recruited from Irish universities, and were to begin work in Dunlop’s central division, located near Fort Dunlop, Birmingham. Initially 12 Irish university graduates were to be employed, but when the full programme developed, this figure was to increase to 30 graduates and ten assistants, who were to be located in the research laboratories part of the new administration block at the Marina. The Cork research centre was to carry out basic research for the central organisation.

In 1965, it was stated that the company’s payroll amounted to over £2m per year and total wages and salaries paid out in the previous 30 years exceeded £20 million. Payments by way of taxation, excise duty and local rates, in 1965 had reached a record level of nearly £900,000 (Irish Press, 12 November 1965, p.8). The Dunlops plan unveiled in November 1965 came 24 hours prior, T.J. Brennan, Managing Director of Fords, announced his company’s intention of spending £1 ½ million on major extensions to their assembly capacity (see previous articles).

The policy of the Irish Dunlop Company had always been to purchase its requirements of materials from Irish sources where practicable. On items such as textiles, packing materials and fuel and power, the company paid out almost £1m in 1965 to other Irish producers. The company hoped to increase its tyre exports to over 100,000 tyres – more than double the quantity for 1964. The firm in Cork was to amass a production area of 250,000 square feet and 125,000 square feet of storage. The firm had also just taken over the Irish Rubber Products factory at Waterford.

Fast forward to September 1967 and during a tour of the 17-acre Dunlops Plant at the Marina to journalists, E J Power, General Manager, expressed confidence in the future of the plant. He commented that if the Cork factory was to continue at maximum employment, which ran to more than 2,000 people, they would have to secure increased productivity. This would occur pending an improvement in the Irish economy, and an increase in exports, particularly to Britain where, where he added the motor industry was passing through a poor period. He explained that the Irish tyre market amounted to about one million tyres a year being exported to 58 countries. This was worth £6 ½ m to Dunlops and up to July 1966, Dunlops had 80 per cent of that market. Since then, imported tyres had cut into their business. Power to journalists noted of a large decline: “no one could have foreseen a few years ago, the slackening in world trade and consequently foreign tyre manufacturers had to get rid of their surpluses. Because our tyre market was small any influx of imports was bound to leave its effects…it will be necessary for us to rationalise still further over the next year, particularly in our non-tyre products but we will try and spread this and cushion it as humanly possible”. 

A press conference by Mr William Bailey, Director of European Operations, in early February 1969 and as reported by the Irish Independent (6 February 1969) commented Dunlops had 103 factories worldwide and 20 research units in five continents. In Europe, Mr Bailey pointed out that these were located in Britain, Ireland, France and Germany and, together employed nearly 40,000 people. Referring to the future growth of the market, he detailed that tyres were a growth industry throughout the world and that demand was growing at about 8 per cent per annum and Europe, as one of the major growth areas, accounts for about one-third of the world sales of car tyres and a quarter of truck tyre sales. Domestic European demand in 1967 was 100 million car tyres with probability of expansion by double by 1980.  His operations were planning to invest £40m into the European branches. He announced that a new tyre compounding department was to be built, costing over £1million, and that this would be in operation at Fort Dunlop in Birmingham.  

To be continued…

Caption:

757a. Map of Dunlops plant, Centre Park Road, Cork, 1960 before expansion (source: Claire Hackett).

Kieran’s Heritage Week, 2014

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

          Cork Heritage Open Day, 23 August, www.corkheritageopenday.ie

–          Kieran’s tours for heritage week:

·         Sunday 24 August 2014 – Eighteenth century Cork historical walking tour, Branding a City-Making a Venice of the North, with Kieran; meet at City Library, Grand Parade, 7pm (free, duration: two hours).

·         Monday 25 August 2014 – Shandon Historical Walking Tour with Kieran, meet at North Gate Bridge, 7pm (free, duration: two hours).

·         Tuesday 26 August 2014 – Blackpool Historical Walking Tour with Kieran, meet at the North Mon gates, Gerald Griffin Avenue, 7pm (free, duration: two hours).

·         Thursday 28 August 2014 – Docklands Historical Walking Tour with Kieran, meet at Kennedy Park, Victoria Road, 7pm (free, duration: two hours).

·         Saturday 30 August 2014,  Douglas Historical Walking Tour with Kieran, meet at St. Columba’s Church Car Park, Douglas, 2pm (free, duration: two hours).

Cork Heritage Open Day, Saturday, 23 August 2014

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

Cork Heritage Open Daywebsite, www.corkheritageopenday.ie

Cork Heritage Open Day is organized by Cork City Council as part of Heritage Week in association with The Heritage Council and media sponsors Cork’s  96FM and the Evening Echo. 

This event would not be successful without the participation of the building owners and proprietors.  The organisers would like to thank each of the participating building proprietors for their generosity and fantastic support.

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article, Heritage Week, 21 August 2014

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

756a. Painting a future, Members of Mayfield Community Arts in Bishop Lucey Park, 22 June 2012

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 21 August 2014

Heritage Week, 23-31 August – Carved from a Swamp

 

Cork Heritage Open Day and Heritage Week are looming – a kind of Christmas week – for a heritage fanatic like me. It is great to see the city’s local history and natural heritage being focussed on. Indeed as a city, we need to celebrate it more publicly and more regularly. This city’s growth on a swamp is in itself a story on which a whole series of talks and walks can be based. I am always in awe at the geologists’ reports on beneath this urban space – that below the swamp are multiple tree stumps of a broken down forest flooded out through sea level rise from over 20,000 years ago. The city’s buildings continue to sink into this space -20,000 years in the making – with each generation struggling to carve its own ‘safe harbour’. 

This city is built on a shift-shaping landscape – sand and gravel, rushes and reeds – a wetland knitted together to create a working port through the ages. It is also the multi-faceted narratives that knit this place together. Standing in Bishop Lucey Park, for example, are multiple monuments – remnants of the blocks of the town walls, the arches for the old Corn Market gates (once behind City Hall), the smiling shawlie within Seamus Murphy’s statue, and the swans of the fountain representing Cork 800. The fountain was placed there in 1985, a nod to the city’s celebration of  800 years since the city’s first charter in 1185. Then there is the imposing sinking tower of Christ Church and its ruinous graveyard to the ghostly feel of the buildings that once stood at the park’s entrance. Along the latter stretch, living memory has recorded Jennings furniture shop, destroyed by fire in 1970; the toy shop of Percy Diamond who was cantor (a singer of liturgical music) at the Jewish synagogue; and the Fountain Café over which the famous hurler Christy Ring had a flat for a time. Of course when I mention just these strands, there are other layers I have not mentioned. The layered memories at times and their fleshed out contexts are endless and often seem timeless.

The presence of all these monuments in the Park often play with my own mind on every walking tour – there is so much one can show and say. These urban spaces seem to slide between the past and present, between material and symbolic worlds. The mural by Mayfield Community Arts on the gable end of the shop next door to the park, entitled “connecting our imagination, how do we imagine a positive future” is apt. The past does play on the imagination; it interconnects between spaces and times into our present and future. It creates at many times, when studying this city, partial memories that the scholar can only reconstruct in part and tentatively in the mind. Memories flow and bend across the story of the development of this North Atlantic big hearted small city.

The kept town walls are a space as a city we need to keep even better. Sometimes we don’t mind these spaces enough. The green rusty plaque on it indicates its age of thirteenth century. During its excavation shards of pottery from Normandy, from the Saintonge region of France, from England, and from other parts of Ireland were also found during the excavation of the wall. For nearly 500 years (1170s to 1690), the town wall symbolised the urbanity of Cork and gave its citizens an identity within the town itself. The walls served as a vast repository of symbolism, iconography and ideology, as symbols of order and social relationships. Indeed the same can be said of all the buildings and spaces the public learn about on this Saturday and next week across talks and walks.

The former town walls like this city were rebuilt in parts by inhabitants through hundreds of years. The river and the tide eroded at their base taking away the various sandstone and limestone blocks and perhaps re-shaping the more resistant ones. The surviving section in Bishop Lucey Park invites the visitor to reflect on life and resistance within the town and how layered the city’s story is. There is wear and tear on the stones presented, which cross from the era of the walled town to the modern city. It invokes the imagination and if anything the wear and tear on our built heritage allows our minds to wonder and reflect about the life and times of people of the past and offers us ideas to take into our future world.  

–          Cork Heritage Open Day, 23 August, www.corkheritageopenday.ie

–          Kieran’s tours for heritage week:

·         Sunday 24 August 2014 – Eighteenth century Cork historical walking tour, Branding a City-Making a Venice of the North, with Kieran; meet at City Library, Grand Parade, 7pm (free, duration: two hours).

·         Monday 25 August 2014 – Shandon Historical Walking Tour with Kieran, meet at North Gate Bridge, 7pm (free, duration: two hours).

·         Tuesday 26 August 2014 – Blackpool Historical Walking Tour with Kieran, meet at the North Mon gates, Gerald Griffin Avenue, 7pm (free, duration: two hours).

·         Thursday 28 August 2014 – Docklands Historical Walking Tour with Kieran, meet at Kennedy Park, Victoria Road, 7pm (free, duration: two hours).

·         Saturday 30 August 2014,  Douglas Historical Walking Tour with Kieran, meet at St. Columba’s Church Car Park, Douglas, 2pm (free, duration: two hours).

Caption:

756a. Painting a future; members of Mayfield Community Arts in Bishop Lucey Park, 22 June 2012 (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 14 August 2014

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

755a. Shandon silhouetted through a recent sunset

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 14 August 2014

Kieran’s Heritage Week, 23-31 August 2014

 

National Heritage Week is upon us again at the end of next week (23 – 31 August). It’s going to be a busy week. In the city and county, there is a wide range of events on. The City Library has an extensive local history lecture programme. I will post all events on my facebook page, Cork: Our City, Our Town. I have set up a number of events. They are all free and I welcome any public support for the activities outlined below.

 

Kieran’s Heritage Week, 23-30 August 2014

 

Heritage Open Day:

 

Saturday 23 August 2014 – Historical Walking Tour of City Hall with Kieran; Learn about the early history of Cork City Hall and Cork City Council, Discover the development of the building and visit the Lord Mayor’s Room, 11am, ticketed (free, duration: 75 minutes). The current structure, replaced the old City Hall, which was destroyed in the ‘burning of Cork’ in 1920. It was designed by Architects Jones and Kelly and built by the Cork Company Sisks. The foundation stone was laid by Eamonn de Valera, President of the Executive Council of the State on 9 July 1932. For more on Cork Heritage Open Day, check out www.corkheritageopenday.ie

 

Kieran’s Heritage Week, 24-31 August 2014:

 

Sunday 24 August 2014 – Eighteenth century Cork historical walking tour, Branding a City-Making a Venice of the North, with Kieran; meet at City Library, Grand Parade, 7pm (free, duration: two hours).

 For nearly five hundred years (c.1200-c.1690), the walled port town of Cork, built in a swamp and at the lowest crossing point of the River Lee and the tidal area, remained as one of the most fortified and vibrant walled settlements in the expanding British colonial empire. The walls served as a vast repository of meanings, symbolism, iconography and ideology, as well as symbols of order and social relationships. However, economic growth as well as political events in late seventeenth century Ireland, culminating in the destruction of the city’s core in 1690, provided the catalyst for large-scale change within the urban area. The walls were allowed to decay and this was to inadvertently alter much of the city’s physical, social and economic character in the ensuing century. By John Rocque’s Map of Cork in 1759, the walls of Cork were just a memory- the medieval plan was now a small part in something larger – larger in terms of population from 20,000 to 73,000 plus in terms of a new townscape. A new urban text emerged with new bridges, streets, quays, residences and warehouses built to intertwine with the natural riverine landscape. New communities created new social and cultural landscapes to encounter, several of which are explored on my tours for this year’s heritage week.

 

Monday 25 August 2014 – Shandon Historical Walking Tour  with Kieran, Discover the City’s historical quarter; learn about St Anne’s Church and the development of the butter market and the Shandon Street area; meet at North Gate Bridge, 7pm (free, duration: two hours).

There are multiple layers of history around the Shandon quarter. Amongst them is the story of the great butter market. By the mid 1700s, the native butter industry in Cork had grown to such an extent due to British empire expansion that it was decided among the main city and county butter merchants that an institution be established in the city that would control and develop its potential. These ‘Committee of Butter Merchants’ located themselves in a simple commissioned building adjacent to Shandon. The committee comprised 21 members who were chosen by the merchants in the city.  In May 1770, it was decided by the Cork Committee that all butter to be exported from Cork was to be examined by appointed inspectors who had two main duties to perform. Firstly, they had to examine and determine the quality and weight of the butter. Secondly, they had to examine and report on the manner of packing and to detect and signs of fraud. 

 

Tuesday 26 August 2014- Blackpool Historical Walking Tour with Kieran, From Fair Hill to the heart of Blackpool, learn about nineteenth century shambles, schools, convents and industries, meet at the North Mon gates, Gerald Griffin Avenue, 7pm (free, duration: two hours).

The walking tour weaves its way from the North Mon into Blackpool, Shandon and Gurranbraher highlighting nineteenth century life in this corner of Cork from education to housing to politics, to religion, to industry and to social life itself. Blackpool was the scene of industry in Cork in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for industries such as tanning through big names such as Dunn’s Tannery and distilling through families such as the Hewitts. The leather industry at one vibrant in Blackpool with no fewer than 46 tanyards at work there in 1837 giving employment to over 700 hands and tanning on average 110,000 hides annually.

 

Kieran’s other walking tours include:

Thursday 28 August 2014 – Docklands Historical Walking Tour with Cllr Kieran McCarthy, Discover the history of the city’s docks, meet at Kennedy Park, Victoria Road, 7pm (free, duration: two hours).

 

Saturday 30 August 2014,  Douglas Historical Walking Tour with Cllr Kieran McCarthy, Discover about the sailcoth and woollen mills, meet at St. Columba’s Church Car Park, Douglas, 2pm (free, duration: two hours).

 

Captions:

 

755a. Shandon silhouetted through a recent sunset (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 7 August 2014

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

754a. Advertisement for Dunlops tyres, 1960s

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent,  7 August 2014

“Technical Memories (Part 85) –Plans for Modernisation”

 

In 1934, the Irish Dunlop Company commenced manufacture in Ireland at its factory at Centre Park Road, held under a lease from Henry Ford & Son.  Under a State manufacture licence, the company was to provide at least eighty per cent in quantity of the country’s requirements of pneumatic rubber tyres.

In a Dáil Éireann debate in mid June 1935, Seán Lemass moved the adoption of a quota order, which prohibited the importation of motor tyres and tubes except under licence. During a debate he noted that the Dunlop Co had been informed that it would be the policy of the Government to refuse a licence to any other external company to manufacture in the country any class of goods, which were being produced by that firm in their factory in Cork. Dunlops would have to produce in sufficient quantities of satisfactory quality and at reasonable prices.

Snippets of social history from this time include the foundation for its famous social club or at this time its Athletic Club set up at the works in late 1936. In December of that year, at the Novices’ Cross-Country Championship at Bandon, the club was represented by eight competitors. W A Nestor, a county and Munster sprint champion had joined the workforce in 1936 as well as prominent athlete, Florrie O’Mahony from Ballydehob. Florrie’s brother was Danno who won the NWA World title from Jim Londos in Boston on 30 June 1935, and was known as the “Irish Whip” in celebration of his famous throwing technique. He was also a champion hammer-thrower and a statue of Danno today exists in the heart of Ballydehob.

At the outbreak of World War II, the Dunlop company was producing virtually all types of pneumatic tyres, a complete range of rubber footwear, rubber soles and heels, rubber hot water bottles, golf balls, tennis balls and sundry other articles manufactured with rubber – the output was deemed at a level sufficient to meet the requirements of the home market. However War created a shortage of raw materials and forced the company to concentrate on the production of tyres to the virtual exclusion of other goods. In the Irish Press on 21 November 1941 (p2) the journalist wrote that the Irish Dunlop Company Ltd was appointed official agents by the government for disposal of all grades of salvage rubber. It was illegal to dispose of salvage rubber otherwise than to the government’s authorised agents. Cash payments were to made on the spot who had rubber.

By April 1947, the company entered into a contract to purchase from Messrs Henry Ford & Son Ltd for £260,000 its factory at Marina Cork. It was initially held under a lease, which was due to expire. The then factory was deemed a modern building, containing nearly 200,000 square feet of floor space, fronting upon a deep water berth on the River Lee (Irish Independent, 17 April 1947, p.7). To meet the purchase price and to provide for the cost of extensions onto adjoining ground, and new equipment, a sum of approximately £450,000 was required. The sum of £330,700 was raised through an increase in the company’s issues share capital of 100,000 ordinary shares. Preference shares to existing shareholders and first mortgage debenture stock were to provide the rest of the funding required.

Fast forward to the 1960s and many Irish households and Irish industrial and commercial projects were dependent on Dunlop to a large or minor extent. An article in the Irish Press by journalist Liam Flynn on 23 April 1962 (p.9) reminded readers that the company produced 35,000 golf balls a year and tennis balls were coming onto the market from Cork at the rate of 6,000 dozen a year. Footwear had leaped from 730,000 pairs in 1936 to 1,500,000 pairs in 1961. Although Dunlop supplied the entire country, the output far exceeded the demands and consequently there was a solid export market engineered through their worldwide organisation. Many countries in the world used some Cork products including large markets in Britain and Germany and further afield in South Africa, Pakistan and the US. Despite the Cork work’s connection with the massive worldwide organisation, the Irish section of 2,500 employees was manned almost exclusively by Irish personnel. In an interview by Mr Flynn with Mr E J Power, general manager of the company in Ireland, Mr Power noted of the forecast that the car population of the country was to grow at a faster rates. Mr Power noted: “we are carrying out plans for modernisation, to meet the growing volume of the Irish market”.

Mr Power’s plans were revealed as costing £2million when unveiled in November 1965. The expansion programme included moving the Dunlop head office from Dublin to Cork’s Marina to a specially constructed six-storey block. A new sales head-quarters was to be erected in Dublin. The company had found that the factory and headquarters were best sited together, giving close liaison between management and production departments. The new office block at Cork was designed so that a computer centre could occupy the whole of one floor. The nucleus of the research staff, recruited from Irish universities, then begun in Dunlop’s central research and development division, located near Fort Dunlop, Birmingham.

To be continued…

 

Captions:

754a. Advertisement for Dunlop’s Tyres, 1960s (Source: Cork City Library)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 31 July 2014

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

753a. Former Dunlops building, Lower Road, Cork, 1927-1934

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 31 July 2014

“Technical Memories (Part 84) –Building a Tyre Empire”

 

“What began as an initial pilot for tyre manufacture grew into a major industrial complex, producing a range of products varying from mattresses to footwear and golf-balls. Along with its neighbouring Marina twin, Ford, have they have become two of the corner-stones of Cork’s prosperity and account for a major portion of the city’s employable pool. Barely 24 hours prior to Mr E J Power’s announcement about Dunlop’s expansion, Mr T Brennan, Managing Director of Fords, announced his company’s intention of spending of £1.5 million to their assembly capacity” (Journalist, Irish Press, Monday 15 November 1965, p.6).

On Thursday 11 November 1965, Irish Dunlop held a press conference. Mr E J Power, Chief Executive outlined the new re-organisation plans for the company – a massive project involving the capital outlay of some £2m and the building of two entirely new giant blocks in Dublin and Cork. This was another enormous investment package into the Cork region like those written about in the column the last couple of weeks.

At the conference, Mr Power traced the history of Dunlop’s contribution to the national Industrial effort beginning back in the mid-thirties when the company undertook large scale, native manufacture of road tyres as a vital contribution to the infant assembly industry and looked after 80 per cent of the country’s tyre needs. Much of Dunlop’s early story in Cork has not been penned. With no social history ever written, its early evolution is tied up with snippets of stories in national and regional newspapers through time.

The story of Dunlops is said to have began with Scots Veterinary John Boyd Dunlop. He established Downe Veterinary Clinic in Downpatrick with his brother James Dunlop before moving to a practice in May Street, Belfast. John, one day on fixing of his son’s tricycle heard his son complaining about the rubber coverings on the wheels of the tricycle. John set about creating a simple invention – the pneumatic tyre. Continuing to experiment, he patented his invention in 1888. However, two years after he was granted the patent Dunlop was officially informed that it was invalid as Scottish inventor Robert William Thomson (1822–1873), had patented the idea in France in 1846 and in the US in 1847. Nevertheless, Dunlop’s idea gripped the public imagination in a big way when racing cyclist, William Hume, using pneumatic tyres, won every cycling event at Queen’s University Sports. Soon businessmen and mps such as Harvey Du Cros and others competed for shares in Dublin – Pneumatic Tyre and Booths Cycle Agency Ltd – to which John Boyd sold his patent rights and of which he became a director. John Dunlop resigned from the company in 1895, and sold most of his shares in the company.

 

In the early 1890s Dunlop Tyres established divisions in Europe and North America. The company established factories overseas. Dunlop partnered with local cycle firms such as Clement Cycles in France and Adler in Germany. The American Dunlop Tyre Company was established in the USA in 1893, with a factory in New York.  In 1893, British manufacture was relocated from Belfast and Dublin to Coventry, which was the centre of the British cycle industry. In 1896 Harvey Du Cros sold the company to the English financier Ernest Terah Hooley for £3 million. Almost immediately, Hooley refloated the company for £5 million as the Dunlop Pneumatic Tyre Company.  From 1900, the company began to diversify from cycle tyres and manufactured its first motor car tyre. In 1906, a car wheel manufacturing plant was built. In 1910 Dunlop developed its first aeroplane tyre and golf ball. By 1918, Dunlop was the fourteenth largest manufacturing company in Britain, and its only large scale tyre manufacturer. In the late 1920s, Dunlop had manufacturing subsidiaries in the US, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland and Japan.  By 1930, Dunlop secured an equal market share with its arch rival Michelin in France.

The Dunlop Rubber Company (Ireland) Ltd was incorporated on 24 March 1924. An article in the Cork Examiner, 16 November 1927 reveals that the company found it necessary to open a large distribution depot in Cork for the southern trade. To suit their purpose they erected a large brick and ferro-concrete structure at the Lower Glanmire Road adjacent to Kent Station. The storage space of the building amounted to 9,000 square feet. A hydro-electric solid tyre fitting press was installed, and also a compressor for giant tyres. A full range of pneumatic and solid motor tyres, and all accessories, were stocked. Goods manufactured by the subsidiary companies of the Dunlop group were to be stocked at Dunlop House, which included waterproof garments, rubber goods, and sporting requisites. The distribution depot manager was T W Kerrigan, former assistant Irish manager and Southern representative of the company, who had 25 years connection with the motor and cycle business.

In 1934, the Irish Dunlop Company Limited became a public company and commenced manufacturing at a new factory, leasing a building from Fords on the Marina. The then Minister for Industry Seán Lemass TD made a deal with Dunlops to entice them to set up a factory whereby the company would have an 80 per cent share of tyre production in the Irish Free State.

To be continued…

 

Caption:

 

753a. Former Dunlops building, Lower Road, Cork, 1927-1934 (picture: Kieran McCarthy)