Category Archives: Cork History

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, Blackrock Historical Walking Tour, Saturday 22 September 2012

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

Blackrock Castle, Cork

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 

Cork Independent

Blackrock Historical Walking Tour, Saturday 22 September

13 September 2012

 

Earlier this year, I ran a walking tour of Blackrock village. On Saturday 22 September 2012, I will run this venture again (meet 2pm, Blackrock Castle, approx two hours). One of the themes I presented during my recent heritage week tours is that within every space in Cork, there is an interesting story to tell about the legacy of a former piece or way of life.

There is much to discover within a short space about Blackrock and its role in the wider city. Dealing with the human experience in this corner of the city, there is a strong legacy in terms of its sense of place and identity; how that was constructed and what clues remain are objects of this tour. Within the story of Blackrock and its environs, one can speak about a myriad of topics from its connection to the river and the harbour to its former mini demesne type landscape in the nineteenth century to its heart of a small village of hard working labourers and fishermen whose struggled to survive.

Within the heart of Convent Avenue, there is a lovely stone wall, which has always impressed me and which separates higher ground from the avenue itself. Random rubble in its nature, it is impressive and adds to the aesthetics of a once very populous area. Around it is a series of modern day houses, but amidst these are a series of cottages, their present day paintwork belying their true nature of times gone by. With more and more British government reports and antiquarian accounts of Ireland, coming online, recently I stumbled across a report from 1843, which focussed on this area and helps to reconstruct life there at that time. The report entitled the “Physical and Moral Condition of the Working Classes in the Parish of St Michael Blackrock near Cork” was read by North Ludlow Beamish, President of the Cork Scientific and Literary Society, before the statistical section of the British Association of the Advancement of Science at Cork August 1843. Of course, this data describes the pre-famine world of Blackrock.

In 1845, the British Association was invited by the Royal Cork Institution, to hold its thirteenth meeting in the Imperial Hotel in Cork. Its comprehensive programme for Cork is now in pdf form on the Association’s website. The Blackrock paper was one of several papers that were read. Some of the science topics included the action of air and water, whether fresh or salt, clear or foul, and of various temperatures, upon cast iron, wrought, iron, and steel, experiments on steam-engines, a series of observations on tidal movement, the physiological action of medicines and even a report on the fauna of Ireland.

North Ludlow Beamish’s paper is full of insights into the area surrounding Convent Avenue. He notes that population of Blackrock and its immediate environs in April 1843 was 2,630 consisting of families living in 413 houses. A total of 61 houses were uninhabited and 9 were in the progress of building. Of the population 2,181 are Roman Catholics and 443 Protestants including dissenters. There were 557 families. Ninety families were living in one roomed houses, 260 in two rooms and 207 in three or more rooms.  The whole number of the gentry was 372 leaving that of the working classes numbering 2,258, and of these 1,125 were males and 1,133 females.

The trades Beamish listed were varied; brick makers (numbering 56), cabinet makers (2), carpenters (15), coopers (3), farmers (53), fishermen (111), gardeners (32), gingle drivers (13, generally owners), lime burners (18), masons (14),  male servants (79), shoemakers (14), slaters (12), smiths (9), tailors (10). Male children numbered 426.  As for females, their total was 1133 with 372 employed as servants in work in fields. Female children, aged and infirm numbered 453 whilst 305 were unemployed.

Beamish further described that 113 of the working classes hold land varying from a quarter of an acre to seven acres each. They pay an average yearly rent of £3 per acre exclusive of poor rate and county rate. The soil was generally excellent and capable of bearing the ‘finest’ wheat crops. The course of tillage was potatoes and wheat alternately, the former being manured. However, the general preparation of the land was not performed well by the working farmer, so that the potato crop seldom yielded more than seven tons or the wheat more than six barrels of 20 stone or about 3 ½ English quarters per acre. This amounted to about two thirds of the same produce that could be produced if the same description of land was under a proper system of tillage. Beamish noted that wages for tradesmen’s were on average 20s per week; labouring men received 5s 10d; women 3s and children 2s per week but many able bodied men worked for 5s a week. In time of harvest, good reapers could be got at the ordinary wages of 1s a day. The Beamish report goes on for pages. A further breakdown is given on the walking tour!

 

Caption:

658a. Blackrock Castle (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

Kieran’s Comments, Tramore Valley Park Draft Plan, Cork City Council Meeting, 10 September 2012

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

Aerial view from Cork City Council of Tramore Valley Park, Cork, a former landfill site; submissions on the plan are now being invited

 

 Lord Mayor, this is a very exciting project.

Building a people’s park is no easy task; the making of a new public façade for the city at the Kinsale Road Landfill is one full of questions and debates on what it should be physically and symbolically.

The last time a major City Park opened was Fitzgerald’s Park in 1905. Of course there are green spaces scattered across the city but none with the same scale of development as the 160 acre site off Kinsale Road.

In recent months Lord mayor, I set up a Design a Public Park Art competition for schools in the city and received over 200 entries plus recently had a historical walking tour across the site as part of the Council’s Open Day. There is enormous interest in this site and I don’t think we have even begun to really promote this park.

The recent open day led to vast crowds taking an interest in the site. And the one thing that will take this project down is the lack of making this a people’s park. Despite the millions of euros invested in managing and capping the dump, the publicity for the new park really hasn’t left the arena of an open day.

We need large signage at the top of its capped hill, a facebook site, engagement with young families and so on

Recently, Lord Mayor, I was asked before my walking tour of the site what was I going to show on the site…. Mary Murphy’s rubbish.

But walking across the site, one can feel the tension in its sense of place, a place haunted and engineered by its past and teeming with ideas about its future. This is a place where the City’s environment has always been debated.

A 1655 map of the city and its environs marks the site as Spittal Lands, a reference to the original local environment and the backing up of the Trabeg and Tramore rivers as they enter the Douglas channel. The backup created a marshland, where coarse wetland grasses grew.

Fast forward to the 1840s and plans were drawn up for a railway between Cork and Bandon. When it eventually opened to the public on 6 December 1851, part of its design encompassed a nine metres high embankment as it crossed the Tramore River’s floodplain. The track crossed the river initially on a wooden bridge, which in time was replaced by a stone culvert more affectionately known as the Snotty Bridge.

The wetlands began as one of the city’s dump or landfill of sorts way back in 1894. Here a facility was made where the sweepings or ashes of the city would be dropped daily and auctioned to the nearby market gardeners for soil enrichment on a Saturday morning. Protests began but to no avail. It remained as a contentious thorn in the debate about the city’s environment well into the twentieth century.

Indeed, when the site of the 1932 Irish Industrial and Agricultural Fair was disbanded, the city got an official dump site off the Carrigrohane Straight Road. In time, this site in 1971 began to be closed off and once again the process of dumping was speeded up at the Kinsale Road site.

Campaigning began once again, this time by the residents of new estates off South Douglas Road. An article in the Southern Star on 13 July 1974 talks about “ a subsidiary, a kind of Branch of the parent dump” being created.

Of course, there were expansions of the dump in 1990. The reams of newspaper columns, which can be tracked down in the City Library reveal that tensions have run strong for nearly forty years to have the dump closed.

Here is a site where the city can draw on so many themes to promote  itself,

A place where the City’s environment has always been in focus

The city’s local history, city’s history, city’s environmental history all interconnect, adding in layers

It is a place of ideas, of opportunity, a place of negotiation, a place of motivation, a place of next steps, a place that needs validation- it has a right to be part of the city

This is a place which changes the city’s gameplan for its future; We need to actively engage people in making the city’s twenty-first century people’s park.

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article, 6 September 2012

Cork History, Uncategorized

657a. First Dail Eireann, 1919

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article, 

Cork Independent, 6 September 2012

Technical Memories (Part 28)

Changing Times

 

The twenty-second meeting of the Irish convention was held on Thursday 27 September 1917 in the Crawford Technical Institute. It was its first meeting in Cork. Sir Horace Plunkett took the chair. The discussion on the proposals for the future government of Ireland continued.

The escalation of war losses suffered by Irish Divisions during the Battle of the Somme in July 1917 and the devastating German U-boat sinking of British merchant shipping, distracted all sides from striving further towards a settlement. It was agreed on 25 September to submit further negotiations to a new sub-committee, a senior ‘Committee of Nine’ containing the most “important and capable figures”. This was one of the themes of the Cork visit. Months of deliberation later, the Convention’s final report agreed on in March 1918 was dealt a fatal blow. With the urgent need for military manpower on the Western Front, the government decided in April 1918 to simultaneously introduce Home Rule and apply conscription to Ireland, which was disagreed with.

By 1919 the Home Rule Bill of 1912 was out-of-date and a new Home Rule bill was devised. This stated that Ireland would govern itself within the Empire but in two separate parts – the south, and the six counties of the north. Each of the two parts would have a parliament in Dublin and Belfast and Ireland as a whole would still have MP’s representing them in Westminster. The bill became an act in 1920. The north accepted the act and in 1921, the King George V opened the parliament of the six counties at Stormont.

However, the south did not accept one part of the act. Those members of Sinn Féin who had been elected MP’s in the election in 1918, refused to take up their seats at Westminster. Instead, in January 1919, they established their own parliament (Dáil Éireann) in Dublin. They also declared an independent Ireland. It was around this time that the Irish Republican Army (founded from what had been the Irish Volunteers) started their campaign against any form of the British government in Ireland. This campaign was led by Michael Collins.

Amidst the changing political minefield of 1919, the consequences of the four year World War I (ended in 1918) was ever present and less and less money was put toward education. Despite this, discussions were still ongoing on how technical education could be improved. Last week, I presented the case of Arthur Sharman Crawford in 1917. At the fifteenth congress of Irish technical Instruction in early June 1919, two Cork based technical education practitioners, Sir Bertram Windle and Dr. John H. Grindley, principal of the Crawford Municipal Technical College, gave two papers on reasons why more funding was needed from Westminster. Copies of these papers can be read in Cork City and County Archives.

In the course of his address, Sir Betram Windle urged that “more reconstructive work and less criticism were desirable” in this country. Without satisfactory teachers, he declared, there would be no good teaching. The teachers should have fixity of tenure, fair salaries, and freedom from anxiety for old age. Their claim for fair salaries was a modest one, he noted, and applied to all classes of teachers, university, secondary, and elementary, as well as technical.

There were numbers of teachers spending long hours in instruction and much of their spare time in “improving their minds”, who did not get the wages of a carpenter or a miner, or any other kind of mechanics- not even that of a policeman. He was not suggesting that the classes of workers mentioned were overpaid but the man “who earned his bread mainly by his brain was just as much a working man as he who gained his living mainly by the sweat of his brow, and his claims were founded on justice and could not be resisted”. He emphasised the necessity for unity of the teaching profession, and said he should like to see it represented by a general educational association instead of separate organisations for the different branches.

Dr. John H. Grindley, Principal of the Crawford Technical Institute, read a paper on “What Technical Instruction can do for the Youth of Ireland”. He said it was becoming far too common to look upon technical teaching as some kind of special and intensive trade instruction quite secondary in importance to other branches in its true educative value. He mentioned the number of technical schools, often referred to as welfare schools, in existence and attached to works in the United Kingdom. There were 300 of them at that moment in time, which showed the value placed on technical training by larger industrial undertakings. The State, he noted, should see that day classes were established, which could be attended by boys during ordinary working hours. Six months later in December 1919, Dr. Grindley left for new pastures from Cork. On leaving to take up a new appointment in England, he was presented by the staff at the Crawford Technical Institute with a solid silver cake basket and Mrs Grindley was presented with a set of silver candle sticks.

To be continued….

Caption:

657a. First Dáil Éireann, 1919 (picture: Cork City Library)

Workhouse Tour, Douglas Road, 24 August 2012

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

Friday 24 August 2012, St Finbarr’s Hospital and the workhouse tour; meet at entrance to the hospital, 11am; learn about the life and times of the former nineteenth century workhouse on Douglas Road (duration: 2 hours). The workhouse, which opened in December 1841, was an isolated place – built beyond the toll house and toll gates, which gave entry to the city and which stood just below the end of the wall of St. Finbarr’s Hospital in the vicinity of the junction of the Douglas, and Ballinlough Roads. The Douglas Road workhouse was also one of the first of over 130 workhouses to be designed by the Poor Law Commissioners’ architect George Wilkinson. 

Saturday 25 August 2012, Views from a Park, Historical walking tour through the site of the new regional park, formerly the Kinsale Road Landfill, 11am, free event, car parking on site, meet at central marquee (duration: 1 ½ hours; (part of an open day with Cork City Council). More on this next week and updates on facebook, Cork: Our City, Our Town.

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article, Views from a Park, 23 August 2012

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

655a. Kinsale Road landfill, soon to be a regional-park

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article 

 Cork Independent, 23 August 2012

Views from a Park

Building a people’s park is no easy task; the making of a new public façade for the city at the Kinsale Road Landfill is one full of questions and debates on what it should be physically and symbolically. The last time a major City Park opened was Fitzgerald’s Park in 1905. Of course there are green spaces scattered across the city but none with the same scale of development as the 160 acre site off Kinsale Road.

On next Saturday, 25 August at 11am, I conduct a walking tour across the site as part of Cork City Council’s Open Day. I have entitled it “Views from a Park” (carparking on site, meet at marquee). The focus perhaps is twofold; by using an elevated site in a city’s suburb, one can tell the story of a city, and also in this context comment on the site’s contentious local history. The physical views range from the city’s shapeful public architecture through Cork’s northern suburbs to the harbour area and Lee Valley to the lush rolling suburbs like Ballyphehane and Douglas.

The new park is an exciting initiative on the Council’s behalf but walking across the site, one can feel the tension in its sense of place, a place haunted and engineered by its past and teeming with ideas about its future. This is a place where the City’s environment has always been debated. A 1655 map of the city and its environs marks the site as Spittal Lands, a reference to the original local environment and the backing up of the Trabeg and Tramore rivers as they enter the Douglas channel. The backup created a marshland, where coarse wetland grasses grew. Such a landscape is also immortalised in the parish name of Ballyphehane or Baile an Feitheáin, Feitheáin, meaning swamp. In the late 1600s, Colonel William Piggott of Oliver Cromwell’s army was rewarded with land across Cork’s southern hinterland. The Pigotts came from Chetwynd in Shropshire and initially came to Ballyginnane beyond present day Togher. In time, they re-named this area Chetwynd. In 1748, the wetland began to be enclosed and be let to city merchants for the grazing of horses. In the late 1700s, this area would have witnessed a number of camp field for military training until a new barracks was built in 1814 on the city’s northside. Interestingly, c. 1784 Sir Henry Browne Hayes, an owner of a glass making and distilling businesses, built Vernon Mount, named after George Washington home and his family’s respect for the British Royal Navy Vice Admiral Edward Vernon.

 

Fast forward to the 1840s and plans were drawn up for a railway between Cork and Bandon. When it eventually opened to the public on 6 December 1851, part of its design encompassed a nine metres high embankment as it crossed the Tramore River’s floodplain. The track crossed the river initially on a wooden bridge, which in time was replaced by a stone culvert. On the southern approach to the city, it became necessary to cut deep through and into the limestone bedrock. The line also cut across three south-eastern approach roads which led into the city itself. Part of this line later became the South Link Road.

 

The wetlands began as one of the city’s dump or landfill of sorts way back in 1894. Here a facility was made where the sweepings of the city would be dropped daily and auctioned to the nearby market gardeners for soil enrichment on a Saturday morning. Protests began but to no avail. It remained as a contentious thorn in the debate about the city’s environment well into the twentieth century. Indeed, when the site of the 1932 Irish Industrial and Agricultural Fair was disbanded, the city got an official dump site off the Carrigrohane Straight Road. In time, this site in 1971 began to be closed off and once again the process of dumping was speeded up at the Kinsale Road site. Campaigning began once again, this time by the residents of new estates off South Douglas Road. An article in the Southern Star on 13 July 1974 talks about “ a subsidiary, a kind of Branch of the parent dump” being created. Of course, there were expansions of the dump in 1990. The newspaper columns, which can be tracked down in the City Library reveal that tensions have run strong for nearly forty years to have the dump closed. And so now it has happened.

 

However, one of the big questions, is how do you rebrand this place? Here is a place for many years provided a need for the city’s waste, a stenchful landscape of waste and broken objects complete with its wildlife. Probably in one hundred year’s time and more, this will be the city’s greatest archaeological sites with thousands of tons of rubbish, still decomposing. Walking across the site, there are the multiple views of the city that reveal its multifaceted story but beneath the feet is the story of Corkonians and pure living. Here is a place of contention but an enormous place of opportunity, a place for years that needed to be validated as part of the city and an enormous landscape of ideas to be harnessed.

 

Caption:

655a. Kinsale Road Landfill, Cork, soil capped and awaiting to be a regional park (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

Kieran’s Heritage Week Events, 18-25 August 2012

Cork City Events, Cork History, Improve Your Life, S.E. Ward Local History, Uncategorized, Ward Events

654a. Saint George slaying the dragon, Old Steam Packet Office, Penrose Quay, Cork

 

Kieran’s Heritage Week Events (18-25 August 2012),

Our City, Our Town, Cork Independent, 16 August 2012

 

National Heritage Week is upon us again next week (18th – 25th August). It’s going to be a busy week. I have set up a number of events. They are all free and I welcome any public support for the activities outlined below.

Saturday 18 August 2012, Historical walking tour of Cork City Hall as part of Cork Heritage Open Day, 10.30am; meet in foyer of old building, Learn about the early history of Cork City Council, Discover the development of the building and visit the Lord Mayor’s Room (duration: 1 ¼ hours; free but ticketed, contact The Everyman Palace, 0214501673, www.corkheritageopenday.ie). One of the most splendid buildings in the city is Cork City Hall. 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. The building was formerly opened by Eamonn DeValera on 8 September, 1936. The building is designed on classic lines to harmonise with the examples of eighteenth and nineteenth century architecture. The facades are of beautiful silver limestone from the Little Island quarries.

Saturday 18 August 2012, Memories of the Lee Valley; historical exhibition; Discover some of the rich histories and memories of the River Lee valley. All day, as part of Water Heritage Open Day, Lifetime Lab, Lee Road, free event.

Monday 20 August 2012, Historical walking tour of Cork City; meet at St Finbarre’s Cathedral, 11am; discover the early origins of the City, learn about Cork’s development across a swamp and as a port (duration: two hours).

Tuesday 21 August 2012, Historical walking tour of Blackpool; meet at North Mon gates, Gerald Griffin Avenue, 11am; Explore the rich history of the area from Fair Hill to the heart of Blackpool; learn about nineteenth century shambles, schools, convents and industries (duration: 2 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 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. Blackpool also has other messages about relief in the form of the former Poor House site at Murphy’s Brewery to Madden’s Buildings to highlighting the work of Ireland’s social reformers through street names such as William O’Brien, Gerald Griffin, Daniel O’Connell and Tomas McCurtain. All these messages inject the place with memories of difficult times but also times of determination to survive against the odds. 

 

Thursday 23 August 2012, Douglas historical walking tour; meet at St. Columba’s Church Car Park, Douglas, 11am; Discover Douglas and its industrial heritage (duration: 2 hours). The story of Douglas and its environs is in essence a story of experimentation, of industry and of people and social improvement. As early as the late thirteenth century King John of England made a grant of parcels of land, near the city of Cork to Philip de Prendergast. On 1 June 1726, Douglas sailcloth factory was begun to be built. Samuel Perry and Francis Carleton became the first proprietors, who were part of a colony of weavers from Fermanagh. The eighteenth century was the last golden age for wooden sailing ships, before the 1800s made steam and iron prerequisites for modern navies and trading fleets. It was a golden age too for maritime exploration, with the voyages of James Cook amongst others opening up the Pacific and the South Seas. Douglas in its own way added in part to this world of exploration.

Friday 24 August 2012, St Finbarr’s Hospital and the workhouse tour; meet at entrance to the hospital, 11am; learn about the life and times of the former nineteenth century workhouse on Douglas Road (duration: 2 hours). The workhouse, which opened in December 1841, was an isolated place – built beyond the toll house and toll gates, which gave entry to the city and which stood just below the end of the wall of St. Finbarr’s Hospital in the vicinity of the junction of the Douglas, and Ballinlough Roads. The Douglas Road workhouse was also one of the first of over 130 workhouses to be designed by the Poor Law Commissioners’ architect George Wilkinson. 

Saturday 25 August 2012, Views from a Park, Historical walking tour through the site of the new regional park, formerly the Kinsale Road Landfill, 11am, free event, car parking on site, meet at central marquee (duration: 1 ½ hours; (part of an open day with Cork City Council). More on this next week and updates on facebook, Cork: Our City, Our Town.

 

Caption:

654a. Saint George slaying the dragon, atop old Steam Packet Office, Penrose Quay (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 9 August 2012

Cork History, Uncategorized

653a. Maria and Von Trapp children, Sound of Music, Cork Opera House, August 2012

 Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 9 August 2012

The Sound of Heritage

I’m a firm believer in the power of place. That wherever, you stand, there are multiple stories around you, waiting to be excavated. Over the next couple of weeks, there are numerous heritage events on that testify to this claim. Heritage Open Day (Saturday 18 August) sees over 40 buildings open to the public with a number of tours and lectures. Heritage week (18-25 August) offers a week long celebration on all things historical in Cork.

Both events above offer perspectives on this city’s very rich history, much of which remains fully unexplored by writers and scholars of Cork’s past plus there are the multiple meanings and connections associated with these histories. The histories can present a narrative that makes one stop to listen and reflect on how the story is remembered and recounted, and fills the mind with curiosity and imagination.

Two of the city’s theatres are also presenting two shows, whose plots in part comment on the power of imagination, and on the power of identity and the role of the individuals in the making of that, The Sound of Music and Guerilla Days in Ireland, respectively. With The Sound of Music, I’m lucky to play a part in the musical. Indeed, standing in the dimly lit wings of Cork Opera House, waiting to walk on stage is the start of a leap of faith. The actor’s fourth wall or the auditorium of the Opera House is an abyss of darkness. Being part of a globally well known musical with a talented Cork cast and to thread the boards of the city’s great theatre is a source of pride for any performer.

The Sound of Music has its key characters but is also a huge ensemble piece. A call is set for all of us to come in every night to warm up. In the corridors of the dressing room, a routine plays out every evening; the building becomes full of life, the warming up of voices, people singing scales, costume checks, chats and conversations, nervous anxiousness awaiting the curtain up, the news of the day, the continuous viewing of the multiple pictures the regular time countdowns by Abbie, the stage manager, notes from the director Bryan, the personal successes and failure of the day are recounted. The lights and sets behind the curtain are double checked. A believable place for the audience is made out a blank dark canvas, the stage. The musical is brought to life through a combination of aspects, and through musicality and acting. The human creative side all combine amongst others to create a strong sense of place on the dark stage. In that perhaps is a message in itself that as we rush around for one building to other on heritage open day perhaps it is apt to reflect on how buildings are enlivened through their design, construction and routine functionality by people.

The Sound of Music is a family favourite; something rooted in global popular culture- a piece of culture passed down from generation to generation since it first outing on Broadway in 1959. One has either have either encountered it on stage or on film. It is the personal story of Maria Rainer’s encounters with the Von Trapp family and the subsequent happy ever after, told through the lens of the Nazi occupation of Austria 1938. It is a musical commentary by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein in post World War II America; they were giants of the musical theatre world and in The Sound of Music present a myriad of themes from questions of life and pushing oneself forward to the contrast of the politics of occupation of Germany over Austria. With a multitude of songs, Edelweiss one of act two’s last songs is the character’s Georg Von Trapp’s take on nationhood in Austria.

Over at the Everyman Palace, the story of Tom Barry’s life and times and his role in the evolving nationhood of Ireland are re-enacted. Aspects of Tom’s autobiography, Guerrilla Days in Ireland are acted out and the key threads of Tom’s journey in Ireland’s turbulent War of Independence is passed down and played out on the Everyman Palace’s dark stage. Again, played by a talented cast, they lead the audience through a montage of reconstructed images in Tom’s life, from his life in the British army, through leading brigades, through to his connections with national characters such as Michael Collins and Eamonn DeValera. Tom had a role like many others in a rapidly changing Ireland, one moving towards Independence and part of the fight for Irish identity and nationhood.

Both the Sound of Music and Guerilla Days of Ireland, have that common theme of the importance of identity running through them. Those themes also run through the stories of the buildings opened for heritage open day. Another example is City Hall, which I conduct a tour of in the morning of heritage open day. Mired in politics, civicness, the building presents a lens to study the who and multiple layers of how the city’s own sense of place developed. See Cork Heritage Open Day.ie or my own facebook page, Cork Our City, Our Town for further details.

To be continued….

Caption:

653a. Maria (Carol Anne Ryan) and the Von Trapp Children, The Sound of Music, Cork Opera House, August 2012 (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-EMhWOvBsG0

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article, 2 August 2012

Cork History, Uncategorized

652a. Dressmaking and millinery workshop, Crawford Municipal Technical Institute, 1912

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent,  2 August 2012

Technical Memories (Part 26)

County Versus City

 

It was Arthur F. Sharman Crawford, who acted as spokesman before Cork County Council in early May 1913. He had been instructed by the Cork County Borough Technical Instruction Committee to appear before Cork County Council to ask for a contribution towards the funds of that committee. His speech and subsequent actions give an insight into the extent of technical education in County Cork plus the relationship between the Crawford Municipal Technical Institute, its city plus its county committees, and Cork Corporation and Cork County Council.

On the 2 May 1913, the Cork Examiner, reported on Crawford’s concerns. The Crawford Municipal Technical Institute educated 2,113 students, of whom they estimated 554, or 26 per cent, resided in Cork County. Cork Corporation struck a rate of 2d. in the pound, which realised £1,440 for the education of those students, but the County ratepayers were contributing nothing towards the education of the 554 students who came to the schools from the County.

Crawford to the County Council noted “if those students [county] did not use the schools it would mean that the county would have to leave them uneducated or else provide schools for them at very large expense”. He proposed that the council should consider a like grant of 18s. per head for their students – that would work out at £500 per year, or one eight of a penny in the pound. He believed that the County Council and the city’s corporation should be working together. Mr Crawford added that he was very proud of the enthusiasm that those students had displayed in connection with the education. He gave the example of a boy from Kinsale, who attended their classes in the institute for a few years, and he rode on a bicycle to and from the city in order to avail of that education. They also had several attending the institute from Mallow, and a large number from other places.

Arthur Sharman Crawford gave a paper on 29 May 1913 at the annual congress in connection with the Irish Technical Instruction Association, which was held in Bangor, Co. Down. Again he commented on the lack of forthcoming funding from county councils; “Many students outside urban, county and borough boundaries enter, enjoying all the advantages of these schools. No doubt, the committees of these schools were in most cases glad to have such students, but find their usefulness impaired by want of funds, owing chiefly to the fact that their resources were crippled by having to pay interest on capital raised for the building, equipment and maintenance of these schools. The town technical schools were the natural centres of institution for the rural districts immediately surrounding them, and without these schools, the county authorities would be compelled to spend large sums to provide education for these students.”

Under the circumstances, Crawford argued that the situation could be improved either by the enlargement of the educational areas, pooling of the funds, and amalgamation of schemes, or by the county authorities paying a capitation fee to the schools used by their students with perhaps a small pro-rata representation on the committees.  From the floor of the congress, Canon Courtenay Moore (historian, writer) said that with reference to the amalgamation spoken of by Mr Crawford, experience had shown that it was not so easy as had been suggested. Dundalk and Drogheda had been in a joint scheme, and had to withdraw from it. He gave three reasons why there should not be amalgamation. The students from the outside area were mostly suburban students, and if they did not pay rates directly they paid them indirectly, in as much as they purchased the “necessaries of life” in the urban district or borough. Secondly, the fees paid and the attendance grant from the pupils more than repaid any outlay on their behalf. Thirdly, the contribution from the Department was much more proportionately than that given to the County Committee. Practically all the County Committees spent up the levels of their incomes and could do no more. County Councils had to rent schools, and in many instances had to build them also.

In a follow up article on the 20 June 1913, the Cork Examiner noted that the Cork County Council was contributing to the county technical education project. The list of classes that were held in the Cork Rural District in 1907-08 comprised domestic economy at Ballyglass, Courtbrack, Matehy and Inniscarra; Lace and crochet at Riverstown, Blackrock, Shanbally and Monkstown; woodwork at Ballincollig, and engineering at Ringaskiddy, Courses in trades, preparatory school, and naval architecture took place at Passage West.  In the 1909-1910 session and onwards into the 1910s, domestic economy classes had spread to Douglas, Ballinora, Ballincollig, Ballinhassig, Firmount, Stuake, Berrings, Dripsey and Leemount; woodwork at Ballincollig, Waterfall and Ballinhassig; Commercial classes were held at Blarney and Riverstown. Queenstown broke away from the County Technical Education Committee and adopted its own system. In the end the matter of the County Council giving substantial funding toward the Technical Institute for its County students did not happen.

To be continued…

Caption:

652a. Dressmaking and millinery workshop, Crawford Municipal Technical Institute 1912 (source: Souvenir programme, 1912)

Kieran’s Heritage Week Events (18-25 August 2012)

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

Saturday 18 August 2012, Historical walking tour of City Hall with Kieran as part of Cork Heritage Open Day, 10.30am, free, meet in foyer of old building, Learn about the early history of Cork City Council, Discover the development of the building and visit the Lord Mayor’s Room (duration: 1 ¼ hours); booking may apply, please see Cork Heritage Open Day website.

 

Saturday 18 August 2012, Memories of the Lee Valley; historical exhibition by Kieran Discover some of the rich histories and memories of the River Lee valley. All day, as part of Water Heritage Open Day, Lifetime Lab, Lee Road, free event.

 

Tuesday 21 August 2012, Historical walking tour of Cork City with Kieran, meet at St Finbarre’s Cathedral, 11am, free, discover the early origins of the City, learn about Cork’s former Viking age core and the Anglo-Norman Walled town (duration: two hours).

 

Wednesday 22 August 2012, Historical walking tour of Blackpool with Kieran, meet at North Mon gates, Gerald Griffin Avenue, 11am, free; Explore the rich history of the area from Fair Hill to the heart of Blackpool, learn about nineteenth century shambles, schools, convents and industries (duration: 2 hours).

Thursday 23 August 2012, Douglas historical walking tour with Kieran, meet at St. Columba’s Church Car Park, Douglas, 11am, free; Discover Douglas and its industrial heritage (duration: 2 hours).

 

Friday 24 August 2012, St Finbarr’s Hospital and the workhouse tour with Kieran, meet at entrance to the hospital, 11am, free; learn about the life and times of the former nineteenth century workhouse on Douglas Road (duration: 2 hours).