Category Archives: Cork City Events
McCarthy: Old Workhouse Tour, Saturday 23 June
On Saturday, 23 June the Friends of St Finbarr’s Hospital will be holding their annual Garden Fete Party from 1.30pm to 4.30 pm. As part of a whole series of events planned, Cllr Kieran McCarthy invites the general public to take part in a historical walking tour of St. Finbarre’s Hospital at 12noon (meet at gate). The walk is free and all are welcome. The tour focusses on the former Douglas Road workhouse, which was also one of the first of over 130 workhouses to be designed by the Poor Law Commissioners’ architect George Wilkinson.
Cllr McCarthy notes: “The tour attempts to paint a picture of the workhouse, its function and insightful stories into life at that time – all of which have conditioned the feel and sense of place of this corner of Douglas Road and the wider city. When the Irish Poor Relief Act was passed on 31 July 1838, the assistant Poor Law commissioner, William J Voules came to Cork in September 1838 to implement the new laws. Meetings were held in towns throughout the country. By 1845, 123 workhouses had been built, formed into a series of districts or Poor Law Unions, each Poor Law Union containing at least one workhouse. The cost of poor relief was met by the payment of rates by owners of land and property in that district”.
Cllr McCarthy continues: “In 1841 eight acres, 1 rood and 23 perches were leased to the Poor Law Guardians from Daniel B Foley, Evergreen House, Cork. Mr Foley retained an acre, on which was Evergreen House with its surrounding gardens, which fronted South Douglas Road. The subsequent workhouse that was built on the leased lands was opened in December 1841. It was an isolated place, built beyond the City’s toll house and toll gates”.
McCarthy: Public Consultation Workshops on Future of Docklands Crucial
Cllr Kieran McCarthy has welcomed ongoing developments in the Docklands quarter of the city from Blackrock through Pairc Uí Chaoimh, the Marina Park to Centre Park Road. “it is clear there in a progressive energy in this corner of the city at this present moment; in continuing progress and to meet the current economic climate and the demand for housing, a new Cork City Docks Local Area Plan will replace the South Docks Local Area Plan 2008 and the expired North Docks Local Area Plan 2005. The Tivoli Docks LAP will be a new plan. All of these area have seen lands been incorporated into NAMA and it is very important that their future is unlocked and older plans are amended”.
“As a first step, the City Council is undertaking a pre-plan issues exploration consultation and invites all stakeholders and interested parties to identify the issues that they feel need to be addressed in the proposed LAPs and how the areas should be redeveloped. The Cork City Docks (Local Area Plan) Issues Paper and the Tivoli Docks (Local Area Plan) Issues Paper can be viewed at www.corkcity.ie/localareaplans”.
The public Consultation workshop to promote discussion about the future of the Cork City Docks and Tivoli Docks is being held on Tuesday 20 June 2017 between 6pm-9pm (with light bites between 5pm-6pm) at the Clayton Hotel, Lapp’s Quay, Cork. Workshop places are limited and the City Council asks that interested people RSVP in advance of the meeting by emailing planningpolicy@corkcity.ie or ringing 021– 492-4086 / 021-492-4757. The City Council aims to ensure a good balance in those participating in the event. Cork City Council invites written submissions from you to inform the plan-making processes. The deadline for the receipt of submissions is 1.00pm on Friday 7 July 2017.
Report, Expert Advisory Group on the future of local government, 9 June 2017
Report:
https://www.housing.gov.ie/sites/default/files/publications/files/report_of_the_expert_advisory_group_on_local_government_arrangements_in_cork_21-04-17.pdf
Cork City Council has welcomed the publication today by Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government, Simon Coveney of the report by the Expert Advisory Group on the future of local government in Cork city and county.
Cork City Council Chief Executive, Ann Doherty said: “We welcome the publication of the report by Minister Simon Coveney. With our Elected Members, we shall study its contents in detail and evaluate its implications for Cork city as the economic driver of the region and for its strategic role as an effective and sustainable counterbalance to the Dublin region”.
Under the chairmanship of Jim MacKinnon, the Cork Local Government Arrangements Report was tasked with undertaking a thorough analysis of the issues dealt with in the Cork Local Government Review Committee in September 2015. It was also to examine the potential of local government in furthering the economic and social well being and sustainable development of Cork city and county.
Its terms of reference included considering the strategic role of Cork city as a regional growth centre, an evaluation of governance necessary to safeguard the metropolitan interests of the city, the examination of local government leadership at executive and political levels, the possibility of establishing an office of a directly elected mayor and the possibility of devolving some power from central to local government.
Jim MacKinnon, CBE is a former Chief Planner at the Scottish Government. Former Chairman of An Bord Pleanála and Eirgrid Chair, John O’Connor, former President and board member of the Cork Chamber of Commerce, solicitor, Gillian Keating and Chief Executive of Richmond and Wandsworth Councils, Paul Martin also sat on the expert advisory group.
McCarthy: Book Twenty Explores Secret Cork
Cllr Kieran McCarthy’s 20th book has hit Cork bookshelves and it entitled Secret Cork. Published by Amberley Press, the new publication is a companion volume to Kieran’s Cork City History Tour (2016) and contains sites that Kieran has not had a chance to research and write about in any great detail over the years. Secret Cork takes the viewer on a walking trail of over fifty sites. It starts in the flood plains of the Lee Fields looking at green fields, which once hosted an industrial and agricultural fair, a series of Grand Prix’s, and open-air baths. It then rambles to hidden holy wells, the city’s sculpture park through the lens of Cork’s revolutionary period, onwards to hidden graveyards, dusty library corridors, gazing under old canal culverts, across historic bridges to railway tunnels. Secret Cork is all about showcasing these sites and revealing the city’s lesser-known past and atmospheric urban character.
Cllr McCarthy notes; “Cork’s story is really enjoyable to research and promote. I still seek to figure out what makes the character of Cork tick. I still read between the lines of historic documents and archives. I get excited by a nugget of information that completes a historical puzzle I might have started years ago. I still look up at the architectural fabric of the city to seek new discoveries, hidden treasures and new secrets. I am still no wiser in teasing out all of Cork’s biggest secrets. But I would like to pitch that its biggest secret is itself, a charming urban landscape, whose greatest secrets have not been told and fully explored”
Continuing Cllr McCarthy highlighted that we all become blind to our home place and its stories; “we walk streets, which become routine spaces – spaces, which we take for granted – but all have been crafted, assembled and storified by past residents. It is only when we stand still and look around that we can hear the voices of the past and its secrets being told”.
“Cork’s story has been carved over many centuries and all those legacies can be found in its narrow streets and laneways and in its built environment. The legacy echoes from being an old ancient port city where Scandinavian Vikings plied the waters 1,000 years ago – their timber boats beaching on a series of marshy islands – and the wood from the same boats forming the first foundations of houses and defences”.
“Themes of survival, living on the edge, ambition, innovation, branding and internationalisation are etched across the narratives of much of Cork’s built heritage and are among my favourite topics to research. Indeed, I fully believe that these are key narratives that Cork needs to break the silence on more and this is a book constructed on those themes”.
Secret Cork is available in Cork bookshops or online at Amberley Press.
Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 1 June 2017
Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,
Cork Independent, 1 June 2017
The Wheels of 1917: The Age of Public Houses
One hundred years ago this month, meetings were held in Cork City to showcase the rationing of beer and stout. The Beer Restrictions Act cut down the manufacture of such products to one-third of the output. A letter to the editor of the Cork Examiner on 2 June 1917 by a representative of the retail traders Mr Michael O’Mullane explains the effects of rationing. Accordiing to Mr Mullane the curtailment had turned to a drastic situation as the one-third was not fairly or evenly divided on a pro rata basis after the product has left the hands of manufacturers.
Hundreds of licensed traders were complaining that they were not getting anything like the one-third of their normal supply. In almost every town in the country there was a brewer agent, or rather purchasing agent. These purchasing agents were, in nearly all cases, retail vintners themselves, and they appeared to be withholding from their former retail customers the greater part of the one-third supply. The purchasing agents claimed they could distribute barrels of stout as they like, i.e. that they could give two or three-thirds to one customer, and one-sixth, one-twelfth, or none at all to another customer. According to Mr O’Mullane, although the liquor traffic was not State controlled it could be argued to be so virtually, owing to the operations of the Beer Restrictions Act as applied to the manufacturers.
For the purpose of protesting against the rationing and intentions of the Westminster Government with regard to the Irish brewing and distilling industries, a public meeting was held in Cork City Hall on Friday evening, 1 June 1917. Lord Mayor Thomas C Butterfield presided. The attendance was large drawing interested parties from the city and county. The proceedings were published on 4 June in the Cork Examiner. The Lord Mayor noted that the numbers affected by the rationing were impossible to calculate; “One could enumerate indefinitely the number of people who would be affected by those restrictions, such as the brewers, the brewery workers, the vintners and the assistants. As far as the workers were concerned, it was elementary knowledge that the men employed in breweries and distilleries or maltings were men who had spent most of their lives at their respective businesses, and if they were disemployed, they would be absolutely no use for anything else”.
The Lord Mayor outlined that vintners, for the most part, lived by the sale of liquor. Many of them had large families, and that it would be a crime if their means of livelihood was taken from them. The taxpayer, too, would be hard hit; “the revenue from the sale of liquor would be reduced, and this, deficit would have to be made up some way”. The farmers, too, would not have a market for their produce. “It the Government were determined to crush out the distilling and brewing trade in Ireland, they had a right to compensate the people for it”.
The City High Sheriff William O’Connor moved a resolution “calling on the Government to relax, or at least to modify, the restrictions at present in force with regard to the Irish brewing and distilling industries which were causing so much inconvenience, hardship and dissatisfaction to the general public, pointing out that such drastic curtailment, as far as Ireland was concerned, was not absolutely necessary”. Despite revealing himself as a teetotaler, he highlighted that what he wished to speak about at the meeting was “the injustice sought to be perpetrated on Ireland by the Government”. The City Sheriff noted that outside the shipbuilding industry in Belfast, British rule had left Ireland practically no other industry of any importance with the exception of the brewing and distilling industries.
The City Sheriff continued his concerns about the effects on the circa 520 public houses in Cork city, with its population of about 76,000—that was one public-house for every 150 persons. The Cork breweries employed around 500 men, and he had been informed that as consequence of the regulations of the Government one brewery discharged 70 men and at another brewery 30 men. He questioned the future employment prospects of those made redundant; “What was to become of these men – that was a point that deserved their most serious consideration. The licensed vintner?, the vast majority of whom were respectable men and women, had always contributed in a most generous manner to all charitable objects as well as to every movement for the betterment of the people and the country, and were those traders, after putting all their savings into their promises, to be thrown on the roadside?”. To him, the licensed vintners circulated a large amount of money and gave a good deal of employment, and he held that if they were to be treated in such a manner they should be given adequate and reasonable compensation.
Cllr Timothy Sheehy said they should demand of their members of Parliament to “strike a decisive blow in their cause”. He argued that for a century England had starved the industries of Ireland, and they were now going to continue that policy. He believed the meeting would have a great effect on the vital question of whether they were going “to allow Lloyd George and the Government crush out those great industries”. After several more passionate speeches, the motion was unanimously passed.
Captions:
897a. Murphy’s Brewery, Blackpool, 1903 (source: Cork City Library)
897b. Malt house and yard, Murphy’s Brewery, Blackpool, 1903 (source: Cork City Library)
Final, McCarthy’s Community Talent Competition, May 2017
Thanks to everyone who took part in 9th year of McCarthy’s Community Talent Competition at the Firkin Crane, May 2017
Pictures, McCarthy’s Make a Model Boat Project, The Lough 2017
Thanks to everyone who supported McCarthy’s Make a Model Boat Project 2017 on Cork’s Lough; sincere thanks as well to Meitheal Mara and the Cork Harbour Festival crew, Kmc
Second Call: McCarthy’s ‘Make a Model Boat Project’ 2017
Cllr Kieran McCarthy invites all Cork young people to participate in the eighth year of McCarthy’s ‘Make a Model Boat Project’. All interested must make a model boat at home from recycled materials and bring it along for judging and floating at Cork’s Lough on Wednesday 24 May 2017, 6.30pm. The event is being run in association with Meitheal Mara and the Cork Harbour Festival. There are three categories, two for primary and one for secondary students. The theme is ‘Cork Harbour Boats from 100 years ago inspired by the 1917 Naval commemorations’, which is open to interpretation. There are prizes for best models and the event is free to enter. There are primary and secondary school categories. Cllr McCarthy, who is heading up the event, noted “I am encouraging creation, innovation and imagination amongst our young people, which are important traits for all of us to develop; places like the Lough are an important part of Cork’s natural and amenity heritage and in the past have seen model boat making and sailing. For further information and to take part, please sign up at www.corkharbourfestival.com.
The Cork Harbour Festival will bring together the City, County and Harbour agencies and authorities. It connects our city and coastal communities. Combining the Ocean to City Race and Cork Harbour Open Day, there are over 50 different events in the festival for people to enjoy – both on land and on water. The festival begins the June Bank Holiday Saturday, 3 June, and ends with the 10 June 28km flagship race Ocean to City – An Rás Mór. Join thousands of other visitors and watch the hundreds of participants race from Crosshaven to Blackrock to Cork City in a spectacular flotilla. Cllr McCarthy noted: “During the festival week embark on a journey to explore the beautiful Cork Harbour – from Mahon Estuary to Roches Point – and enjoy open days at heritage sites, and lots more; we need to link the city and areas like Blackrock and the Marina and the harbour more through branding and tourism. The geography and history of the second largest natural harbour in the world creates an enormous treasure trove, which we need to harness, celebrate and mind”.
Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 27 April 2017
Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,
Cork Independent, 27 April 2017
Kieran’s May Historical Walking Tours
Early summer is coming and the weather is improving. So below are details of the next set of my public walking tours for the first week of May,
Tuesday 2 May 2017, Historical Walking Tour with Kieran of Eighteenth Century Cork, from the walled town to an eighteenth-century Venice of the North; meet outside Cork City Library, Grand Parade, 6.45pm, (free, 2 hours, finishes on St Patrick’s Street)
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. However, economic growth as well as political events in late seventeenth century Ireland, culminating in the Williamite Siege of Cork 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.
One of the most elegant additions to eighteenth century Cork was the Exchange or Tholsel, which was built on the site of Roches Castle (now the site of the Catholic Young Men’s Society hall on Castle Street). It was an important building of two stories. On its opening in 1710 the Council ordered the upper floor room be established as a Council Chamber with liberty for the Grand Jury of magistrates and landlords to sit. The lower part was used for commercial purposes. where a pedestal known as “the nail”, was used for making payments (still in existence in Cork City Museum). In later times the room was used for public sales. A figure of a dragon made of copper and gilt surmounted the cupola of the building as a weather vane. The Exchange declined as a market in time – through the erection of a Corn Market on the Potato Quay (popularly known as the Coal Quay) and improved facilities for the transaction of business offered to merchants.
Wednesday 3 May 2017, Historical Walking Tour with Kieran on the Walk of the Friars, from Red Abbey through to Greenmount; meet at Red Abbey Square, 6.45pm, (free, 2 hours, finishes near Deerpark)
The central bell tower of the church of Red Abbey is a relic of the Anglo-Norman colonisation and is one of the last remaining visible structures, which dates to the era of the walled town of Cork. Invited to Cork by the Anglo-Normans, the Augustinians established an abbey in Cork, sometime between 1270 AD and 1288 AD. It is known that in the early years of its establishment, the Augustinian friary became known as Red Abbey due to the material, sandstone, which was used in the building of the friary. It was dedicated to the Most Holy Trinity but had several names, which appear on several maps and depictions of the walled town of Cork and its environs. For example, in a map of Cork in 1545, it was known as St Austins while in 1610, Red abbey was marked as St. Augustine’s.
In the mid eighteenth century, part of the buildings of Red Abbey were used as part of a sugar refinery. This refinery was burnt down accidentally in December 1799. Since then, the friary buildings with the exception of the tower have been taken piecemeal. The tower is maintained by Cork City Council who were donated the structure by the contemporary owners in 1951 and also own other portions of the abbey site. Today, the tower of Red Abbey approximately thirty metres high is one of Cork’s most important protected historic structures. The remaining tower cannot be climbed but medieval architecture can still be on the lower arch of the structures and in the upper windows. The adjacent street names of Red Abbey Street, Friar’s Street and Friar’s Walk also echoes the days of a large medieval abbey in the area.
Thursday, 4 May 2017, Historical Walking Tour with Kieran of Blackrock Village, from Blackrock Castle to Nineteenth Century Houses and Fishing; meet outside Blackrock Castle, 6.45pm, (free, 2 hours, finishes at railway line walk)
The earliest and official evidence for settlement in Blackrock dates to c.1564 when the Galway family created what was to become known as Dundanion Castle. Over 20 years later, Blackrock Castle was built circa 1582 by the citizens of Cork with artillery to resist pirates and other invaders. In the early 1700s, the prominent Tuckey family, of which Tuckey Street in the city centre is named, became part of the new social elite in Cork after the Williamite wars and built part of what became known in time at the Ursuline Convent. The building of the Navigation Wall or Dock in the 1760s turned focus to reclamation projects in the area and the eventual creation of public amenity land such as the Marina Walk during the time of the Great Famine. Soon Blackrock was to have its own bathing houses, schools, hurling club, suburban railway line, and Protestant and Catholic Church. The pier that was developed at the heart of the space led to a number of other developments such as fisherman cottages and a fishing industry. This community is reflected in the 1911 census with 64 fishermen listed in Blackrock.
Captions:
882a. Sketch of Cork Exchange, c.1750 (now the site of YMCA hall, Castle Street, one of the city’s primary market sites, subject of eighteenth century Cork tour (source: Cork City Library)
882b. Map of north east marsh, Paul Street & St Paul’s Church, 1726 by John Carty (source: Cork City Library)
