Daily Archives: January 6, 2011

Kieran’s Our City, Town, 6 January 2011

Cork History, Uncategorized

 572a.Photograph of Irish Industrial and Agricultural Fair Grounds, 1932 on the Carrigrohane Straight Road, Cork

 

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 6 January 2011

In the Footsteps of St. Finbarre (Part 242)

Through the Agricultural Hall

 

Continuing our imagined walk through the Irish Industrial and Agricultural Fair held on the Straight Road in 1932, the archived fair catalogues reveal much about what was on display but also the aims of the fair. The promotion of Ireland and its ideas, enterprises and manufactures was a priority.

One of the central buildings in the fair was the Agricultural Hall. In 1932 approximately 53% of the working population in the country was employed in the agricultural sector (c.6 % in 2010). Most Irish farmers owned their own land, some 11 million acres having been purchased as a result of the Land Acts of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In addition Ireland had a strong dependence on Britain to export its agricultural produce.

The Agricultural Hall showcased the work of the young State’s Department of Agriculture. Their exhibit encompassed the development of several phases of Irish agriculture such as the improvement in live stock, increased production in poultry, better methods of marketing, the improvement of agricultural seeds, manures and cereals, the increase in forestry plantation areas, the nature of the agricultural education provided for children in the Irish Free State under the Department’s educational schemes as well as illustrations of some of the activities of the agricultural staffs of University Colleges Cork, Dublin and Cork.

As a context, historians such as Diarmuid Ferriter and Joe Lee, through their publications, reveal that ten years previously to 1932 one of the first acts of the new Irish Free State government was to develop Irish agriculture. Sugar beet production was begun and standards were applied to all butter and egg production. An Egg Act was passed in 1925 standardising all egg exports for testing and preservation methods. A Dairy Production Act was passed in 1924 requiring registry and packaging standards for all butter and milk products. A Bull Act was passed requiring licensing and inspection of all bulls, some 18,000 animals, for their suitability for breeding. This act applied to pigs, horses and rams as well.

The exhibit in the poultry section at the Cork fair was designed to indicate the progress that had been made in egg production. That was shown through the results obtained from the different breeds of poultry entered in the egg laying competitions in the nearby Munster Institute on the Model Farm Road from 1913 to 1931. In the marketing section of the fair, a model egg store was displayed, which showed the layout and equipment required for an egg store registered for the testing, grading and packing of eggs for export. During the period of the fair, the Department of Agriculture conducted classes in the section for the purpose of training pupils in the grading, testing and packing of eggs.

In the livestock exhibit, photographs illustrated the different breeds of live stock throughout the Irish Free State and the improvement brought about by the Department’s Live Stock Schemes. Diagrams and graphs showed the annual value of the live stock export trade and the development of the cow testing schemes. Maps and photographs also illustrated the work carried out at the Department of Agriculture’s forestry stations and the development of the various types of forest trees at these and at other centres throughout the country. Initially, the Irish Free State carried out most tree planting to stop Ireland’s deforestation and to decrease Ireland’s timber dependency. Most of the new state forests were grown on mountain land and consisted mainly of ‘exposure-tolerant’, fast-growing conifers.

Four years previous to the Cork fair, a new Forestry Act was introduced to restrict the felling of trees. This was the first time the State took measures to control the felling of trees and empower the Minister of Agriculture to force the replanting of felled areas. The Act also empowered the Minister to provide non-refundable grants to private landowners. The first planting grants were made available in 1931. By this time there were only 220,000 acres of woods in the country and any new forest planting that occurred was undertaken almost exclusively by the State. Perhaps one of the most famous afforestation projects in the Lee Valley was that of the initial 350 acres of forest planted in Gougane Barra in 1938. The plantings were largely of Lodgepole Pine, Sitka Spruce and Japanese Larch, three species that thrive in poorer soils and stand up well to exposure. The Sitka Spruce, native to a narrow coastal belt from Alaska to California is particularly resistant to constant winds and suits a wide range of soils. Lodgepole Pine, is so called because the North American Indians used its stems as poles for their wigwams while the Japanese Larch is quite distinct in its appearance as a soft feathery light-green needle tree.

Almost all of the new afforestation was undertaken by the state up until the Second World War when afforestation rates naturally fell. Once again demand for fuel and timber resulted in large-scale deforestation. The Forestry Act of 1946 introduced a comprehensive legal framework for forestry in Ireland. This was accompanied by a government policy to increase the rate of afforestation to 10,000 acres per annum, again pursued principally by the State.

To be continued…

Captions:

572a. Photograph of Fair grounds on the Straight Road, Cork 1932 (source: Archive of Iona National Airways, Dublin)

572b. Sketch of Agricultural Hall, from the Fair Catalogue 1932 (source: Cork Museum)

 572b. Sketch of Agricultural Hall, Irish Industrial and Agricultural Fair, 1932, Straight Road, Cork

Redevelopment of Beamish and Crawford Site

Cork History, Kieran's Council Work, Uncategorized

Kieran’s critique article,

“Putting Appartments on Site of Cork’s birth is a Travesty” 

that appeared in the Evening Echo, Cork,

3 January 2011, p.18

 

Planning permission was recently lodged with Cork City Council for the redevelopment of the four acre Beamish and Crawford site on South Main Street. The plan encompasses a 6,000 seat event centre, a ‘brewing experience’ visitor centre, 30,000 sq, feet of office space, 250 student beds, a viewing tower, cinemas, shops and  restaurants.

I have been open in my concerns about the re-development of the Beamish and Crawford site. This site has enormous cultural and tourism potential. I am not happy with the scale of the proposed development and I am annoyed because this is where Cork began and a developer is going to put apartments and office blocks on the vast majority of it.  I have been open and tolerant to many modern developments in our city during the boom years but not with this one. I do not want an office block style development destroying the foundations of the civic memory of the city.

Way back in the early 1980s, Cork Corporation made the great decision to create Beamish Lucey Park – providing a space to showcase the city’s medieval past in terms of the incorporation of the foundations of the town wall and highlighting Cork 800 and the city’s charter in 1185 through John Behan’s sculptured eight swans on the fountain; sculptural pieces by Seamus Murphy were added in as well as the old Cornmarket Gates that once stood in the backyard of Cork City Hall. The Beamish and Crawford site can be a similar cultural project.  This is where over 1000 years ago, someone physically ‘broke their back’ whilst sinking their wooden materials into a swamp to start the process of reclamation and what we know as Cork today.  Possibly this is where Dún Corcaighe, the Viking fort, which was attacked in 848 AD by an Irish chieftain, once stood. Recent excavations on the Grand Parade City Car Park site revealed that the people living in the 1100s actually moved the river channel that ran through the site to allow for timber housing and thus created the present south channel in the area. In one pit dug by archaeologists they found a wooden quayside dating to 1160 and in another found the remains of four houses, each demolished to make way for the next one over the space of 50 years between 1100-1150 AD.

Cork is the only settlement in Ireland that has experienced every phase of urban growth. Hence I could go and in depth mention the creation of South Main Street in the era of the walled town, the foundation of the Beamish and Crawford brewery in 1792 and the businesses that lined the adjacent street during the centuries. This is a  place of tradition, of continuity, change and legacy, of ambition and determination, engineering ingenuity, survival and experimentation. But it is not a place I strongly feel for student accommodation and office blocks.

I’m always very disappointed when the city’s early heritage is discovered and for the most part is covered over. For example Queen’s Castle, the tower shown in the city’s Coat of Arms, was excavated and encased in concrete in 1996 and still lies under Castle Street.  One had the Crosses Green apartment complex, the remains of a Dominican Friary were discovered in 1993 but no remains were incorporated.  I am reminded at this juncture if you go to places like Galway, they have successfully incorporated the remnants of their town wall into Eyre Square Shopping Centre, they have also incorporated their built heritage into Eyre Square. Or venture further afield to York where they have developed a Viking interpretative centre on the site of their old Viking town or go to Munich city centre where they have an enormous transport and science museum/ centre.

There seems to be a sense to certain developers in this city that heritage is something that cannot be harnessed or that it is not something unique or exciting or maybe that generally people want to live in a place that looks the same as some other cities in the world.  I can say the following from giving walking tours of this city for 17 years that people don’t come to Cork or Ireland because it is the same as other places. Tourists want to come here to see something different and to learn something new. Despite having great venues such as the Lifetime Lab or Blackrock Castle, there is no venue in the city centre that tells the story of Cork’s evolution, revealing the city’s sense of place, pride and identity. I also feel that the promotional heritage frameworks that are in place are not good enough for a city that has a European Capital of Culture and a Lonely Planet accolade ‘under its belt’.

I honestly believe we need a new framework for the harnessing of our built, our cultural heritage and our very identity. We need new ideas and not apartment blocks that eradicate the immense cultural legacy that the Beamish and Crawford site possesses. This site provides an enormous opportunity to pull a focus back on South Main Street which dates back 1200 years but in our time is rotting away with filthy laneways and dereliction.  The proper redevelopment of this site into a four acre cultural tourism hub would also help in pulling focus on the new Christ Church development, the Meitheal Mara boat project and the new South Parish Local Area Plan. In an age of the recession, there is an opportunity through the Beamish and Crawford site to foster our tourism and cultural sector which I feel has not been adequately opened up. There is an enormous cultural and economic opportunity to be missed if the development of this site is messed up.