Former Lord Mayor and Current Independent Cllr Kieran McCarthy is to restart his free historical walking tours during the month of April. Tours will be of the Barrack Street/ Friar’s Walk area, the Shandon quarter, the old Cork City workhouse site on Douglas Road in St Finbarr’s Hospital, and Fitzgerald’s Park respectively.
Cllr McCarthy noted; “Having an opportunity to show people around the heritage of Cork City has always been an important job of work for me. I have pursued more research than ever in recent years. As more and more old newspapers and books are digitised it has allowed greater access to material and hence more material to create historical walking trails of some of Cork’s most historical suburbs and heritage set pieces”.
“I am also trying to sharpen the tours I have and to create new ones in a different suburb. The four areas I am re-starting with for the 2025 all have their own unique sense of place, their own cultural and built heritage, their own historic angles, some really interesting ‘set pieces’ and add their own stories to how the city as a whole came into being. They also connect to the upcoming 2025 Cork Lifelong Learning Festival and its motto of Investigate, Participate and Celebrate”, concluded Cllr McCarthy.
Full details of Kieran’s April tours are below; All tours are free, 2 hours, and no booking is required.
Saturday 5 April, The Friar’s Walk Tour; Discover Red Abbey, Elizabeth Fort, Barrack Street, Callanan’s Tower & Greenmount area; Meet at Red Abbey tower, off Douglas Street, 1pm in association with the Cork Lifelong Learning Festival.
Sunday 6 April, Shandon Tour; explore Cork’s most historic quarter; meet at North Main Street/ Adelaide Street Square, opp. Cork Volunteer Centre, 1pm, in association with the Cork Lifelong Learning Festival.
Saturday 26 April, The Cork City Workhouse Tour; learn about Cork City’s workhouse created for 2,000 impoverished people in 1841; meet just inside the gates of St Finbarr’s Hospital, Douglas Road, 1pm.
Sunday 27 April, Fitzgerald’s Park: The People’s Park Tour, from stories on the Mardyke to the Cork International Exhibition, meet at the band stand, 1pm.
1269a. Front cover of brochure for the Discover Cork Schools Heritage Project 2024-25 school season.
Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,
Cork Independent, 5 September 2024
Launch of Discover Cork: Schools’ Heritage Project, Year 23
It is great to reach year 23 of the Discover Cork: Schools’ Heritage Project. It is just slightly younger than this column but both this column, the schools’ heritage project and the walking tours are all about making Cork and its multitude of local histories more accessible to interested citizens and to empower the next generation to be the next guardians of such a heritage.
Over 17,000 students have participated in the Schools’ Heritage Project through the years with many topics researched and written about – from buildings and monuments to people’s oral histories.
Never before has our locality and its heritage being so important for recreation and for our peace of mind. In the past four years, more focus than ever before has been put on places and spaces we know, appreciate, and attain personal comfort from.
The Schools’ Heritage Project is aimed at both primary and post primary level. Project books may be submitted on any aspect of Cork’s rich past. The theme for this year’s project is “The Stories All Around Us”. Funded by Cork City Council, the Project is an initiative of the Cork City Heritage Plan.
The Project is open to schools in Cork City at primary level to the pupils of fourth, fifth and sixth class and at post-primary from first to sixth years. There are two sub categories within the post primary section, Junior Certificate and Leaving Certificate. The project is free to enter. A student may enter as an individual or as part of a group or a part of a class entry.
Co-ordinated by myself, one of the core aims of the Project is to encourage students to explore, investigate and debate their local heritage (built, archaeological, cultural and natural) in a constructive, active and fun way. Projects on any aspect of Cork’s rich heritage can be submitted to an adjudication panel. Prizes are awarded for best projects and certificates are given to each participant. A cross-section of projects submitted from the last school season can be gleamed from links on my website, www.corkheritage.ie where there are other resources, former titles and winners as well as entry information.
Students produce a project book on their local area using primary and secondary sources. The workshop comprises a guide to how to put a project together. Project material must be gathered in an A4/ A3 size Project book. The project may be as large as the student wishes but minimum 20 pages (text + pictures + sketches).
Projects must also meet five elements. Projects must be colourful, creative, have personal opinion, imagination and gain publicity before submission. These elements form the basis of a student friendly narrative analysis approach where the student explores their project topic in an interactive and task-oriented way. In particular, students are encouraged (whilst respecting social distancing) to attain material through visiting local libraries, engaging with fieldwork, making models, photographing, cartoon creating, and making short snippet films of their area. Re-enacting can also be a feature of several projects.
The project is open to many directions of delivery. Students are encouraged to engage with their topic in order to make sense of it, understand and work with it. Students continue to experiment with the overall design and plan of their work. For example, and in general, students who have entered before might engage with the attaining of primary information through oral histories. The methodologies that the students create provide interesting ways to approach the study of local heritage.
Students are asked to choose one of two extra methods (apart from a booklet) to represent their work. The first option is making a model whilst the second option is making a short film. It is great to see students using modern up todate technology to present their findings. This works in broadening their view of approaching their project.
For over 22 years, the project has evolved in exploring how students pursue local history and how to make it relevant in society. The project attempts to provide the student with a hands-on and interactive activity that is all about learning not only about heritage in your local area (in all its forms) but also about the process of learning by participating students.
The project is also about thinking about, understanding, appreciating and making relevant in today’s society the role of our heritage, our landmarks, our oral histories, our environment in our modern world for upcoming citizens. So, the project is about splicing together activity on issues of local history and heritage such as thinking, exploring, observing, discovering, researching, uncovering, revealing, interpreting, and resolving.
This project is kindly funded by Cork City Council (viz the help of Niamh Twomey, Heritage Officer), Administration support and prizes are also provided by the Old Cork Waterworks Experience, Lee Road.
Overall, the Schools’ Heritage Project for the past 22 years has attempted to build a new concerned generation of Cork people, pushing them forward, growing their self-development empowering them to connect to their world and their local heritage. Spread the word please with local schools. Details can be found on my dedicated Cork heritage website, www.corkheritage.ie.
Caption:
1269a. Front cover of brochure for the Discover Cork Schools Heritage Project 2024-25 school season.
Kieran’s Upcoming September Tours (end of season), all free, 2 hours, no booking required:
Sunday 8 September, Blackpool: Its History and Heritage; meet at square on St Mary’s Road, opp North Cathedral, 2pm.
Saturday 14 September, Cork South Docklands; meet at Kennedy Park, Victoria Road, 2pm.
Saturday 21 September, Fitzgerald’s Park: The People’s Park, meet at the park band stand, 2pm.
Sunday 22 September, Stories from Blackrock and Mahon, meet in adjacent carpark at base of Blackrock Castle, 2pm.
1268a. Ronnie Herilihy Pocket Park, Langford Row, Cork (picture: Kieran McCarthy).
Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,
Cork Independent, 29 August 2024
Ronnie Herlihy Pocket Park at Langford Row
In recent weeks, Douglas Street Business Association in conjunction with Cork City Council launched a new pocket park at Langford Row. The park is in memory of the late Ronnie Herlihy, Local Historian, who wrote and gave walking tours across the South Parish. The new pocket park contains some of his writings on information panels.
The park is about unlocking more of the sense of place of the South Parish and sending people into a parish as Ronnie describes in his books “where you’ll find something of historical interest around almost every corner”.
In publishing his first edition of his South Parish book in 2003, Ronnie writes that he was aiming to do two things. Firstly, the book was simply meant to be a place one could go if they were interested in the rich heritage of the South Parish. Ronnie describes his work as, “a sort of one-stop-shop if you like, compiling between the covers of one book a list and some basic information about many of the historic places within the present parish, rather than having to search out the numerous different publications that contain articles or reports on those places”.
Secondly, Ronnie was hoping to awaken in people, no matter where they live, an awareness of their own surroundings, and “to get them thinking of the fantastic history all around them that has led to the making of this great City of Cork”.
Ronnie describes that all 1,000 copies of the initial South Parish book were sold. In the process €7,300 was donated to the Children’s Leukaemia Unit in the Mercy Hospital, being all the proceeds received from the sale of the book.
Ronnie undertook a second edition because of the number of times people asked him if the book was still available to buy. So, he published a second, revised edition. In doing a revised edition, it afforded Ronnie the opportunity to expand on many of the items in the original book. In Ronnie’s new introduction he quotes; “Having spent over 44 years either living or working in the heart of the South Parish, the area is in my blood. I’m still fascinated by the history of this part of Cork City, and as a proud member of the Cork South Parish Historical Society. We know that learning about the history of our own place is a never-ending process. Take a walk with me now in my own place, the open air museum that is the South Parish”.
1268b. The late Ronnie Herlihy.
The ‘awaken in people’ and the connection methodologies served Ronnie well in his next publication journey where he took on Victorian Cork. As he researched the South Parish, he spotted other nuggets of stories from Cork’s Victorian past, which took him off on another adventure.
Known as Victorian Cork, the book looked at events that occurred during the early Victorian period, from 1837 to 1859. The publication sought to as Ronnie noted “throw a little light onto the past, allowing the modern reader the opportunity of peering through the eyes of their Cork ancestors. It will hopefully give them a glimpse of a city that would only have been familiar to their grandparents, great-grandparents or great great-grandparents”.
The majority of the newspaper reports in his book were gleamed from the Cork Examiner, apart from the first few years between 1837 and 1841, when The Constitution or Cork Advertiser, was exclusively used. Where in our time it is easier than ever to use the digitised Irish Newspaper Archive from home, back in the day, Ronnie spent hour after hour, work lunchbreak after work lunchbreak turning physical newspaper pages and micro-film pages in Local Studies in Cork City Library.
Ronnie’s interest in people and their stories also brought him on his journey with his third book – this time returning to a physical space that of St Joseph’s Cemetery. The idea for writing this book followed on from research he carried out when he undertook a project on St Joseph’s Cemetery for the Annual Exhibition of the South Parish Historical Society.
That initial research, which looked at around two dozen burials in the cemetery, led to him as he quotes in his introduction spending many hours there in the summer of 2008, walking among the headstones of our ancestors, and “realising for the first time what an important historic gem we have here in the city”.
From that initial visit to research the project, as Ronnie explains in his introduction he was hooked. Ronnie followed that up by creating a powerpoint presentation that looked at the history of the cemetery, a number of those who are buried there, and some of the impressive monuments dotted around it. Afterwards, based on the presentation, Ronnie put together a walking tour of the cemetery. The next most logical step after that was to write a book.
In the immediate years leading up to his shock death, Ronnie’s interest in public history gathered further momentum. For many years Ronnie was a core part of the South Parish Historical Society annual exhibition – he was a core driver – and there was many a year he would spend hours and hours and hours involved in its organisation and its evolution
Ronnie’s adult education courses with Tom Spalding and others, regular phone ins with Neil Prendeville left many citizens wondering if they knew their city at all; it brought many citizens to Ronnie’s banner, so to speak, wishing to see the city through his eyes. In addition, there was his regularly gifting of photos and other snippets of Cork history to the world of Facebook.
The new pocket park is a fitting memory to Ronnie Herlihy – a great local historian but also a proud Corkonian.
Kieran’s September 2024 Tours, All free, 2 hours, no booking required:
Sunday 1 September, The Friar’s Walk in association with Douglas Street Autumnfest; Discover Red Abbey and Barrack Street area, Meet at Red Abbey tower, off Douglas Street, 12noon.
Sunday 8 September, Blackpool: Its History and Heritage; meet at square on St Mary’s Road, opp North Cathedral, 2pm.
Saturday 14 September, Cork South Docklands; meet at Kennedy Park, Victoria Road, 2pm.
Saturday 21 September, Fitzgerald’s Park: The People’s Park, meet at the park band stand, 2pm.
Sunday 22 September, Stories from Blackrock and Mahon, meet in adjacent carpark at base of Blackrock Castle, 2pm.
Caption:
1268a. Ronnie Herilihy Pocket Park, Langford Row, Cork (picture: Kieran McCarthy).
Sunday 1 September, The Friar’s Walk; historical walking tour with Cllr Kieran McCarthy in association with Douglas Street Autumnfest; Discover Red Abbey, Elizabeth Fort, Barrack Street, Callanan’s Tower & Greenmount area; Meet at Red Abbey tower, off Douglas Street, 12noon (free, duration: two hours, no booking required).
Sunday 8 September, Blackpool: Its History and Heritage; historical walking tour with Cllr Kieran McCarthy; meet at square on St Mary’s Road, opp North Cathedral, 2pm (free, duration: two hours, no booking required).
Saturday 14 September, Cork South Docklands; Discover the history of the city’s docks, Historical walking tour with Cllr Kieran McCarthy, from quayside stories to the City Park Race Course and Albert Road; meet at Kennedy Park, Victoria Road, 2pm (free, two hours, no booking required).
Saturday 21 September, Fitzgerald’s Park: The People’s Park, historical walking tour with Cllr Kieran McCarthy, from stories on the Mardyke to the Cork International Exhibition, meet at the band stand, 2pm (free, duration: 90 minutes, no booking required).
Sunday 22 September, Stories from Blackrock and Mahon, Historical Walking Tour with Cllr Kieran McCarthy of Blackrock Village, from Blackrock Castle to Nineteenth Century Houses and Fishing; meet in adjacent carpark at base of Blackrock Castle, 2pm (free, 2 hours, finishes at railway line walk).
1267a. Group on a recent walking tour of The Marina by Kieran McCarthy.
Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,
Cork Independent, 22 August 2024
Kieran’s National Heritage Week Tours, 17-25 August 2024
My 2024 National Heritage Week historical walking tours continue. I am half way through my programme of tours. All are free and there is no booking required.
Thursday 22 August 2024, The Lough and its Curiosities; historical walking tour; meet at green area at northern green of The Lough, entrance of Lough Road to The Lough, Lough Church end; 6.30pm.
This walking tour explores the Lough, its heritage and the rich surrounding history of this neighbourhood of the city. This amenity has witnessed eighteenth century market fairs as well as ice skating to nineteenth century writers and nursery gardens to twentieth century cycling tournaments and the rich and historic market garden culture.
Friday 23 August 2024, Douglas and its History, historical walking tour in association with Douglas Tidy Towns; Discover the history of industry and the development of this historic village, meet in the carpark of Douglas Community Centre, 6.30pm.
The story of Douglas and its environs is in essence a story of experimentation, of industry and of people and social improvement. The story of one of Ireland largest sailcloth factories is a worthwhile topic to explore in terms of its aspiration in its day in the eighteenth century. On 1 June 1726, the Douglas Sailcloth Factory is said to have been founded by a colony of weavers from Fermanagh. The eighteenth century was a golden age for wooden sailing ships, before the 1800s made steam and iron prerequisites for modern navies and trading fleets. The era was also a golden age too for maritime exploration, Douglas in its own way added in part to this world of exploration.
Douglas Village is lucky that it has been written about in depth by local historians in the 1980s and 1990s – scholars such as Con Foley and Walter McGrath – both of whom shone a huge spotlight on the depth and range of material available. Con Foley’s book on the history of Douglas shows his love of place and his participation in sitting down for years, penning notes, walking the ground, using ordnance survey maps and pondering on and mapping interconnections between the different memories of families active in the village and environs through time.
Saturday 24 August 2024, The City Workhouse, historical walking tour; learn about Cork City’s workhouse created for 2,000 impoverished people in 1841; meet just inside the gates of St Finbarr’s Hospital, Douglas Road, 1.30pm.
The Cork 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.
Written in depth over the years by scholars such as Sr M Emmanuel Browne and Colman O’Mahony, many in-depth primary documents have survived to outline the history of the hospital. What shines out are the memories of how people have struggled at this site since its creation in 1841. Other topics perhaps can also be pursued here such as the history of social justice at the site, why and how society takes care of the vulnerable in society and the framing of questions on ideas of giving humanity and dignity to people and how they have evolved over the centuries.
TheHospital serves as a vast repository of memories, symbolism, iconography and cultural debate. Standing at the former workhouse buildings, which opened in December 1841, there is much to think about – humanity and the human experience. The architect to the Poor Law Commissioners in Ireland from 1839 until 1855 was George Wilkinson. Nearly all the workhouses, accommodating between 200 and 2000 persons apiece, were designed in a Tudor domestic idiom, with picturesque gabled entrance buildings which contracted the size and comfortlessness of the institutions which lay behind them. By April 1847 all 130 workhouses were complete, the Douglas Road being one of the first.
Sunday 25 August 2024, Sunday’s Well historical walking tour; discover the original well and the eighteenth century origins of the suburb, meet at St Vincent’s Bridge, North Mall end, 1.30pm.
Sunday’s Well was a famous landmark through the ages and the adjoining district took its name from the well. In 1644, the French traveller M de La Boullaye Le Gouz, visited Ireland. In the account of his journey he writes: “A mile from Korq [Cork] is a well called by the English, Sunday Spring, or the fountain of Sunday, which the Irish believe is blessed and cures many ills”.
Walk from Wise’s Hill to the heart of Sunday’s Well and learn about the development of an eighteenth century suburb. This tour begins at the elegant house at the junction of the North Mall and Wise’s Hill, which was the residence of the distiller Francis Wise. It is a beautiful detached five-bay three-storey former house, built c. 1800, now in use as a university building. The building retains interesting features and materials, such as the timber sliding sash windows, wrought-iron lamp bracket arch, and interior fittings. The North Mall distillery was established on Reilly’s Marsh around 1779, and by 1802 the Wise brothers were running the firm. Whiskey production was another significant industry in Cork from the late eighteenth century.
Caption:
1267a. Group on a recent walking tour of The Marina by Kieran McCarthy.
