Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 10 May 2012

Blackrock Historical Walking Tour, Sunday 13 May 2012

I am an avid fan of The Marina and the Atlantic Pond. I have to admit sitting for several hours on the benches in sunny weather reading. So over the past three years, as an expansion to my city tours, I have tried to develop new tours in the city’s suburbs. In particular I have concentrated in the south east part of the city, mainly because of its various photogenic qualities such as its landscapes and architecture. So next up in this study is  a historical walking tour of Blackrock Village on Sunday 13 May 2012, 6.30pm, leaving from Blackrock Castle (approx 1 ½ hours, free event).

A stroll in Blackrock is popular by many people. The area is particularly characterised by its location on the River Lee and the start of Cork Harbour. Here beautiful architecture such as imposing late Georgian residences and country like cottages merge to create a historical tapestry of questions of who developed such a place of ideas. Where not all the answers have survived, Blackrock is lucky, unlike other suburbs, that many of its former residents have left archives, autobiographies, census records, diaries, old maps and insights into how the area developed. These give an insight into ways of life and ambitions in the past, some of which can help the researcher in the present day in understanding Blackrock’s identity going forward.

Walking along the foreshore on the city side of Blackrock Castle, it’s difficult in this time to re-imagine the River Lee as a significant highway in the city’s past connecting the city to the ocean. However with eighteenth century paintings such as by Nathaniel Grogan in the Crawford Art Gallery, historic maps in the city library, even the ordnance survey online, one can view and ultimately re-imagine and map how the river channel was maintained and encroached upon as well by warehouses and quaysides.

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. Adjacent the ruinous castle is the original slipway, which became known as King’s Dock and is attached to a legend that William Penn used it for his departure point for America in the 1680s. It is overgrown but still present. Its distance from the present River Lee reveals the hard slog involved in reclaiming areas such The Marina and environs from the river. The castle is grilled up but its limestone blocks are still impressive. A diary book survives for Eliza Deane in 1832 in the Cork Archives. Eliza’s husband was the well-known Cork architect, Thomas Deane. Entries for 8-9 March 1832, recount the laying of the first stone of their new house by their ‘beloved son’ Thomas Newenham Deane. The stone was originally the top stone of ‘old Dundanion Castle’. She also mentions stone masons making ‘a ‘picturesque ruin’ of Dundanion Castle.

Further east of Dundanion, is the imposing Blackrock Castle. The original fort or castle was built in 1582 by the citizens of Cork to safeguard ships against pirates who would come into the harbour and steal away the vessels entering the harbour. In 1604 Charles Blount Lord Deputy of Ireland defended himself against the citizens of Cork who were rebelling against King James I of England. Over a century later in 1722, the old tower was destroyed by fire and a new one built by the citizens.

Apart from functioning as a type of lighthouse, Admiralty Courts were held at Blackrock Castle to legislate over the fishing rights of the citizens. Under various charters granted many centuries ago, the Mayor of Cork enjoyed Admiralty jurisdiction to the mouth of Cork harbour. The history of fishing and fishermen in Blackrock at least dates back to the early 1600s and perhaps is regrettably one of the histories unrecorded in Blackrock. In 1911, 64 fisherman ranging in age from 14 to 70 years of age are listed in the census as living in Blackrock village. At least 40 are heads of households and had their own dwellings. Even more interesting was that this community was lodged in a sense in a middle class culture, a series of big houses complete with estate network and management. Indeed, Blackrock had its own pier, bathing houses, boating club, schools, suburban railway line, and Protestant and Catholic churches.

For the fishermen it was an endless struggle each year to survive. There is an interesting link by this group to national politics and struggles in the late nineteenth century.  Several fishermen went on to play with the Cork National Hurling and Football club, which was formed in 1886. Indeed the advent of the nickname “the Rockies” describes not only a terrific hurling team today but a link into the past, where action and innovation were survival mechanisms for the families of the players. So this new walking tour tries to shine a light on the memory of this community but also the memory of other local communities, which it contested with plus how they all meshed together to create a most interesting place to study and explore.

Back to technical education next week again!

Caption:

640a. Sunset over Blackrock Pier and environs, April 2012 (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 3 May 2012

Technical Memories (Part 15)

Awake, Arise or Forever Fallen

Sligo born William Joseph Myles Starkie (1860 – 1920) was a noted Greek scholar and translator of Aristophanes. He was President of Queen’s College, Galway (1897–1899) and the last Resident Commissioner of National Education for Ireland under British rule (1899–1920). He was the second of the keynote speakers at the eleventh annual congress of the Irish Technical Instruction Association on 5 June 1912, which was held at the Crawford Municipal Technical Instruction, Sharman Crawford Street, Cork.

Known for his controversial reform packages in education, William Starkie was well known. He was appointed Resident Commissioner of National Education for Ireland in February, 1899. He started with abolishing the ‘Results’ system in which the amount of a teacher’s salary depended on the results of the annual oral examinations of their pupils. This he argued in documents in UCC’s library tended to produce a very mechanical form of teaching aimed mainly at satisfying the Inspector. A child could pass a Reading Test and not understand a word of it. Introducing the payment of a regular salary he improved matters. In 1904 he began a campaign to amalgamate small schools, but here he ran foul of the Catholic Bishops and clergy. Some clerics opposed the amalgamation of boys and girls schools as being morally dangerous. In the end the Catholic authorities prevailed. William Starkie was responsible for making Shakespeare familiar to the boys and girls in the National schools throughout Ireland, and he also introduced Irish History into the National School’s primary curriculum. Up until then the authorities forbade lessons in Irish History or even Geography in order to prevent any chance of nurturing independence in the classroom. He authorized the distribution of a ‘pro-establishment’ Irish history text by Patrick Weston Joyce.

Dr. William Starkie’s paper at the Crawford Institute congress, which was published in the Cork Examiner, was on the importance of creating continuation schools or a technical form of secondary schools. He said the motto he had selected for his paper was from John Milton’s Paradise Lost and the address by Lucifer, the Fallen Angel to the angels of heaven, “Awake, Arise! Or be forever fallen”.  In Milton’s book I Satan lures the angels to his side by making them believe that to follow him is to rise above God and that if they do not, they will be fallen angels. Starkie continued in the early parts of his speech to criticize the House of Commons approach to Irish education, that in a sense it was a fallen angel of interest in Irish political affairs. He argues that the important debate on Irish education estimates was conducted in 1911 by about forty Irish members of parliament.

Starkie’s interest in education across religious groups is interesting. For example he drew strongly on the words of Sir Edward Carson that “the neglect and starvation of Irish education, has been a reproach to the intelligence and humanity of successive administrations”. Carson was leader of the Irish Unionist Alliance and Ulster Unionist Party between 1910 and 1921 and strongly against the Home Rule Bill going through in 1912. He also drew on the strong speeches and words of Otto Von Bismarck German statesman who unified numerous German states into a powerful German Empire under Prussian leadership in the 1860s and 1870s:

“ we shall be ruined by examinations, the majority of those, who pass them are naturally so run down that they are incapable of initiative ever afterwards. They take up a negative attitude towards everything that is submitted to them; and, what is worst of all, they have a great opinion of their capabilities because they once passed their examinations with credit”. Speaking on this Starkie continued, “what we want is not learned Mandarine, but men of energy and intellectual grip…After all, the only searching examination is that of real life; and if we fail in it, all academic successes are mere vanity and vexation of spirit”.

In his speech, Starkie described that whilst travelling about Ireland in 1903, that in many parts of the country, where the children were brightest, and the schools most efficient, there was an almost complete dearth of higher education suited to their needs. Thus in Kerry and West Cork, where primary education was according to him “probably the most excellent in the country”, there were no secondary schools except in Dingle, Tralee, Killarney and Macroom and Skibbereen. As there were no state bursaries available, and few travelling facilities, the existing secondary schools could not be utilized by the outlying population except by candidates for the priesthood, who received ecclesiastical help. A similar lack of higher education he noted existed in Donegal, Mayo and Galway. He gave the example of the Scotch educational system, who were well supplied with what he called intermediate schools. They had found it necessary to establish thirty-five higher grade schools. Starkie spent some time visiting some of these schools in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Such schools in Ireland, according to him, would have two aims, first to continue education beyond the elementary stage, and secondly to communicate branches of knowledge as to suggest various occupations in life to students.

To be continued…

Caption:

639a. Group of delegates photographed at the Crawford Municipal Institute, Cork June 1912 (photo: Guy & Co.)