Daily Archives: August 25, 2011

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article, 25 August 2011

Cork History, Uncategorized

 605a. The imposing Christ the King Church in Turners Cross opened in October 1931

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 25 August 2011

 

Lecture: Creating an Irish Free State City

 

Continuing with the showcasing of some of the work I am pursuing for heritage week, there are two events over the next week, which engage with aspects of Cork’s development in the 1920s and 1930s. The first event is a historical walking tour of Cork City Hall on this Saturday for Cork Heritage Open Day and the second is a lecture on Cork in the 1920s and 1930s for the South Parish Historical Society.

It’s difficult not to be enthused by what was achieved in Cork during the 1920s and 1930s. I have documented aspects of this era in this column over the last number of months by exploring the twentieth century heritage on the Carrigrohane Straight Road. However, there is much I am still researching and trying to come to grips with. Indeed, the City is blessed with an enormous newspaper clippings archive in Cork City and County Archives in Blackpool, where 90 years ago someone cut hundreds of columns out of Cork Examiner newspapers to create scrapbooks. Negotiating ten years of them one begins to see one strong element shining through – the strong vision and ambition that the management of Cork Corporation had at that time. The opening of City Hall 75 years ago on the 8th September may seem a pinnacle of success in those times but there were in my opinion other impressive strands to the Corporation’s work.

The slow rebuild of the half burnt St. Patrick’s Street is evident in the archive’s collection of letters from the Corporation asking for updates from the shopkeepers. The debate by City councillors to rebuild the burnt out City Hall also echoes strongly in the stream of debate in the makeshift Council Chamber in the lecture theatre of the Crawford Art Gallery. However, with the dissolution of the Council in 1924, the young national government appointed a city commissioner in the form of City Administrator Philip Monahan.

Philip Monahan was appointed in November 1924. In the early 1920s, he had being Mayor of Drogheda and a member of Louth County Council. He was also a commissioner in Kerry by 26 years of age. Finding his feet quickly in Cork, by the following March 1925, he was talking to the press and setting out his goals; Using some of Westminster’s compensation package for the burning of the city, he sidelined the rebuilding of City Hall, not all of it, he did set about getting new designs; However, he was to set aside £25,000 for the installation of a new filtration plant at the waterworks, invested £50,000 for asphalting 68,000 square yards of streets, pushing for the completion of St. Patrick’s Street, the  re-building of Parnell Bridge, the purification of the city’s sewage schemes, the replacement of the eighteenth century culverts under St. Patrick’s Street to create new sewers, strove to create a new cattle market for the city and took over of management of what the press called the ‘Mental Hospital’ in Sunday’s Well.

Being invited to lecture on aspects of democracy and local government in the new Irish Free State, Philip Monahan called for the adoption of Cork: A Civic Survey. In 1926 the Cork Town Planning Association produced the latter document, which provided a debate template on the City’s slum conditions. The founding of the Cork Town Planning Association in 1922 marked the beginning of a serious attempt to deal with the problem of the dreadful housing conditions in parts of the Middle Parish and the areas around Barrack Street, Shandon Street and Blarney Street. Indeed in March 1925, Monahan pitched that he would invest £70,000 for the provision of 200 houses in Turners Cross in the immediate interim. He also put down his marker that he was to build efficiency in the local public sector. Indeed with the threat of using direct labour, he pursued an agenda to reduce the wage of Corporation workers to 4s. 6d. per week.

In an age of a non welfare state, it is also interesting to read of work of the Corporation Schools Medical Officer Dr. Annie O’Sullivan. By 1930 arrangements had been put in place for the treatment of ear diseases and defects and diseases of the eye, nose and throat. In 1933, 8,139 children had been checked at clinics at city schools. School meals were given of hot cocoa with bread and butter or jam or currant buns with milk in some schools. The Cork Children’s Fresh Air Fund, established in 1932, helped 500 children. In 1933, 442 children, 229 girls, 213 boys (5 to 14 years of age) were sent to Rostellan, Rathcormac, Ringaskiddy and Youghal and housed there for a fortnight. The initiative was funded by concerts, flag days and garden fetes. These were difficult and stressful times and also times where people worked harder to mind their families and survive. But certainly the array of ideas put forward by Monahan and his team makes for interesting reading in revealing their determination, realism and ambition in making the City a better place to live and work in.

 

Kieran’s Events:

Saturday, 27th August 2011, 1.30pm; History and legacy: A historical walking tour through Cork City Hall, meet at Cork City Hall, Anglesea Street entrance. Booking at 021 4924717.

Wednesday 31st August 2011, 8pm; Creating an Irish Free State City, Cork in the 1920s & 1930s in association with South Parish Historical Society, South Parish Community Centre.

 

Captions:

605a. The imposing Christ the King Church in Turners Cross opened in October 1931 overlooking Capwell Road houses, which got their first Corporation tenants in April 1928 (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

605b. Photograph of Philip Monahan, City Manager in a late 1920s Cork City Hall diary (source: Cork City Library)

605b. Philip Monahan

Douglas local history: Did you know?

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

Thanks to everyone who turned out for the history of Douglas talk this morning (25 August 2011).

 Douglas Library, History of Douglas Talk, 25 August 2011

 

Douglas: Did you know?

·         The district of Douglas takes its names from the river or rivulet bearing the Gaelic word Dubhghlas or dark stream.

·         In an inquisition of the lands of Gerald de Prendergast in 1251, Douglas is first mentioned. In 1299, Douglas was one of the towns listed in County Cork, where the King’s proclamation was to be read out.

·         In 1372, in an inspection of the dower of Johanna, widow of John de Rocheford, there is a reference to allotments of land to her in Douglas. The Roches originally came from Flanders, then emigrated to Pembrokeshire in Wales, before three of the family – David, Adam and Henry de la Roch – joined Strongbow in the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland in the 12th century. In all there are sixteen Rochestowns in Ireland and innumerable Roche castles.

·         In 1586, the townlands in Douglas that are mentioned are “Cosdusser (south of Castle Treasure house), Castle Treasure, Ardarige and Gransaghe”.

 

·         On the 1st June 1726, Douglas Factory was begun to be built. Samuel Perry and Francis Carleton were the first proprietors. They were also members of the Corporation of Cork.

·         The 18th 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.

·         Robert Stephenson, technical expert on linen industry, who visited every linen factory in Munster, Leinster and Connaught on behalf of the linen board visited Cork on 9 August 1755: “ Near this city and in it are carried on the only sail cloth manufacturers worth notice at present in the Kingdom; Douglas Factory, the property of Messrs. Perry, Carelton and Co. contains about 100 looms, with Boylers, Cesterns, Kieves and every apparatus for preparing the Yarn to that Number which they kept employed till the Duty on Irish Sail Cloth, that had drawn the Bounty was laid on in England; the Hemp manufactured there now is entirely Foreign, they have been so much discouraged by the London Market (to which they export entirely) of late Years, and the Duty charged in England, with other Occurences, as to reduce their number of looms to about fifty, and those are now employed.”

 

·         On the 21st July 1784, “the Corporation of Cork granted £50 to Messrs. John Shaw (Sailcloth manufacturer), Jasper Lucas (gentlemen), Aylmer Allen (merchant) and Julius Besnard towards the new church now erecting at Douglas, provided that, a seat shall be erected in said Church for the use of the Corporation.”

·         In 1863, Wallis and Pollock’s Douglas Patent Hemp Spinning Company were the largest ropeworks in the south of Ireland, which had been established within the former Douglas sailcloth factory, erected scotching machinery.

 

·         The surviving multi-storey flax-spinning mill at Donnybrook was designed and built by the Cork architect and antiquarian, Richard Bolt Brash, for Hugh and James Wheeler Pollock in 1866. It’s essential design, like that of the Millfield flaz-spinning mill, was modelled closely on contemporary Belfast mills.

·         in 1889, the mill was bought by James and Patrick Morrough and R.A. Atkins, the High Sheriff of Cork. In 1903, the mill employed 300 people, many of whom were housed in the 100 company-owned cottages in Douglas.

·         In 1883, the O’Brien Brothers built St. Patrick’s Mills in Douglas Village. It was designed by a Glasgow architect.

·         O’Brien’s Mills were extended in the closing decades of the nineteenth century, and by 1903 it operated with some 80 looms and employed 300 workers, many of whom lived in company-owned houses in Douglas village.

 

·         In 1837, there were 40 or so seats or mansions and demesnes in the environs of Douglas, which made it a place where the city’s merchants made their home and also these suburban spaces make for an interesting place to study in terms of ambition. Those landscapes that were created still linger in the environs of Douglas Village.