Monthly Archives: April 2014

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 24 April 2014

Cork History, Landscapes, S.E. Ward Local History, Uncategorized

738a. Aerial Photograph of Cork Docks, 1968

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 24 April 2014

“Technical Memories (Part 78) – The Prosperous Region”

 

“Altogether the capital investment in the Cork area during the last two years exceeds £20m and factories under construction or already planned involve further capital expenditure of some £8m. It is significant that much of this investment includes capital which came from foreign sources in Britain, the USA, Holland, Germany, and France. In no other part of the State has such a considerable industrial development taken place” (John J Horgan, The Irish Times, 17 October 1961).

The eighty-year-old John J Horgan, Chairman of the Cork Harbour Commissioners wrote at length in his Irish Times editorial of 1961 describing the remarkable development which took place in the previous years.  He had been chairman of the Commissioners for 35 years and had played his own part in developing the bustling port.  He was an authority on Irish history, a lawyer and writer, and chairman of a company that had department stores in Cork and Belfast. In his 1961 editorial he describes the key developments of late 1950s  – the Cork ESB plants (hydro and steam), Whitegate Oil Refinery, Verolme Dockyard, Gouldings Fertilisers – these were all large scale industrial projects, which brought Cork industry to a whole new level of expansion. In addition to the large developments, smaller factories had been built in Cork, on the Kinsale Road. These included Kincora Carpets Ltd., O’Brien Brothers (Spinners) Ltd., and Seafield Fabrics, Ltd. Additions had also been made by 1961 to the large Sunbeam-Wolsey factory in Blackpool, Harringtons and Goodlass, Wall, Ltd, and the Cork Shoe Factory, Ltd.

There were also several developments of note in County Cork.  Cor-Tex Proofers, Ltd were producing for upholstery and similar use. A flourishing pottery at Carrigaline, which was in existence for many years, had transformed the district economically, and had manufactured earthenware and tiles. In Youghal there were several textile factories, subsidiaries of Sunbeam-Wolsey. In Kinsale a fish cannery under French management, an American cotton clothing factory, and a German metal works had successfully started operation, while at Bantry an English firm had opened a factory for the manufacture of clothes dryers and washing machines. There were factories that were started at Mallow, one by the Irish Sugar Company for the accelerated freeze-drying of food, and another by the Borden Company of America for the production of dried milk.

Industrial expansion also had a knock on affect on the population of Cork City and suburbs, which was 115,506, being an increase of 3,000 as compared with 1951. Since the end of the war Cork Corporation had built 3,485 houses, mainly in new housing estates around the city’s edges. In 1961, the plan was to build another thousand houses in the early 1960s.  A modern public lighting system had been installed. North Gate Bridge or Griffith’s Bridge was rebuilt on an enlarged scale at a cost of £70,000. Two new reservoirs were constructed to increase and improve the city’s water supply. A proposal by the Corporation to bring the suburbs within the city boundary was under consideration at a local government inquiry.

John Horgan in his editorial also highlighted infrastructural developments in the Port of Cork. The Harbour Commissioners during the previous ten years had improved facilities. In 1919 the Cork Harbour Commissioners acquired from the Board of Trade 153 acres of slobland at Tivoli for the purpose of pumping dredged material ashore, thus creating new land for industrial purposes. This happened over several decades. In the early 1950s oil storage depots were developed on the site. A further ten acres were made available for development circa 1960. The principal quays in the city were reconstructed and renewed. The reconstruction of the South Deep Water Quay involved providing re-inforced concrete as well as riverside railway sidings, cranes and mechanised grain discharging plant for the rapid unloading of ships into railway wagons of the adjacent mills. The reconstruction of Anderson’s Quay and the North Custom House Quay was completed as well as the construction of the North Deep Water Quay, which included the provision of a swinging basin. In 1961 the river channel to Cork was in the process of being deepened to a minimum depth of 18 feet at low water, and it was planned to increase this depth to 20 feet at low water.

A complete survey of the lower harbour, led to a major improvement in the entrance channels been made. Two modern tenders were built to service the Atlantic liners. The cost of these improvements was over £1.6m and was financed out of the Commissioners’ own resources with the aid of government grants amounting to near £900,000.  In 1960 the total tonnage entering the port of Cork, including liners and tankers, was just over 4 million tons. These were not only the highest annual tonnage figures ever in the history of the port but also the highest total tonnage entering any port in the Republic during that year. In his editorial, Horgan commented on the tonnage figures, which to him reflected not only the prosperity of Cork and its hinterland, but also the growing importance of the harbour; he noted; “In large part this increased prosperity is due to the enterprise, intelligence and courage of the people of Cork”.  

 

Caption:

738a. Aerial photograph of Cork Docks, 1968 (Source: Cork City Library)

McCarthy’s Forthcoming Community Events

Arts, Cork City Events, Cork History, Improve Your Life, Kieran's Council Work, Landscapes, S.E. Ward Local History, Uncategorized, Ward Events

 

 

Cllr McCarthy’s Community Talent Competition 2014

 

Cork’s young people are invited to participate in the sixth year of Cllr Kieran’s McCarthy’s Community Talent Competition’. The auditions will take place on Sunday 27 April 2014 between 10am-5pm in the Lifetime Lab, Lee Road. There are no entry fees and all talents are valid for consideration. The final will be held over one week later on Saturday 10 May. There are two categories, one for primary school children and one for secondary school students. Winners will be awarded a perpetual trophy and prize money of €150 (two by €150). The project is being organised and funded by Cllr Kieran McCarthy in association with Red Sandstone Varied Productions (RSVP). Further details can be got from the talent show producer (RSVP), Yvonne Coughlan, 085 1798695 or email rsvpireland@gmail.com.

 

 

Kieran’s Gramophone Recital

Kieran will present this month’s Ballinlough Gramophone Recital this Thursday evening, 24th April, 7.30pm at Balinlough Pastoral Centre next to the church. He will play and sing songs from the musicals. All welcome.

 

 

Kieran’s Historical Walking Tour of Balintemple

The first of three walking tours Kieran will present in early summer takes place on Sunday, 4 May and is of Ballintemple (2pm, meet inside Ballintemple graveyard, opp. O’Connor’s Funeral Home, Boreenmanna Road, two hours, free). Ballintemple as a settlement hub is one of the earliest in the city that came into being. Urban legend and writers such as Samuel Lewis in 1837 describe how the Knight’s Templar had a church here, the first parish church of Blackrock: “At the village of Ballintemple, situated on this peninsula, the Knights Templars erected a large and handsome church in 1392, which, after the dissolution of that order, was granted, with its possessions, to Gill abbey. At what period it fell into decay is uncertain; the burial ground is still used”.

 

Forthcoming

–          Mahon Historical Walking Tour, Sunday 11 May, 2pm meet Blackrock Garda Station, top of Avenue De Rennes (two hours).

–          Ballinlough Historical Walking Tour, Sunday 18 May, 2pm, meet Beaumont National Schools, (two hours)

–          McCarthy’s Make a Model Boat Project, 2pm, Sunday 1 June, The Lough, in association with the Ocean to City Maritime Festival.

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 17 April 2014

Uncategorized

737a. Haulbowline Island from Queenstown, now Cobh, c.1900

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 18 April 2014

“Technical Memories (Part 77) – Plans of Steel”

 

Continuing on from the articles on industrial expansion in Cork in the late 1950s, Haulbowline Steel Holdings was also a major player in Ireland’s necklace of native industries.  The site on Haulbowline Island was once a British naval dockyard where its docks were used for the loading and discharge of ships. In the Irish Free State the site belonged to the Board of Public Works but was developed by Hammond Lane Foundry in 1937.

The Irish Press newspaper on 23 September 1937 reported that 2,500 tons of plant and dismantled buildings, part of a steel mill at Charleroi, Belgium were landed on Haulbowline Island for the works started there by the Hammond Lane Foundry Co. Ltd., Dublin. The Company had bought the whole mill. The new Haulbowline mill was to supply the Irish Free State’s needs and was to export steel as well.  Scrap being exported was to be diverted to the island for processing and pig-iron and coal were to be imported to the site. At the start they planned to employ 1,000 in all. In June 1938, a new company Irish Steel Ltd was formed. When opened on 24 August 1939, the journalist of the Irish Press commented that the mills were designed to produce merchant steel, sheet steel and tinplate. The black sheet steel was for the manufacture of numerous items in everyday use, galvanising for roofing and fencing, etc.

There was also the deep-water basin and dock accommodation, which enabled the maximum advantage to be taken of the cheapest method of raw material to, and of the finished product from, the mills. Mr Ludvig  Loewy, noted by the press, as one of the most eminent authorities in the world, was chief designer of the mills. The formal opening was made by Seán Lemass, TD, Minister for Industry and Commerce. Remarking on Ireland’s industrial expansion he noted; “It is true to say that in everything we plan nowadays we have to keep an eye on the situation in Europe, which appears to have developed to a point where only a miracle will avert war. A European war will, of course, stop our industrial expansion at once”. The Irish Press on 25 August 1939 also listed that the leading industrial nations in the world had their own steel plants – the United States, Great Britain, Germany, France, Russia, Belgium, Italy, Japan, Sweden, Poland, India, Canada and Spain. The reporter argued of the importance of a steel plant for a country and the need for self-sufficiency; “it is universally recognised in industrial and commercial circles that an efficient steel industry contributes as no industry is capable of doing to the prosperity and economic progress of a country.”

Fast forward to 8 January 1947, and Irish Steel Ltd were placed in the hands of a receiver. Shortly afterwards the Irish government took it over a going concern. Between 1947 and 1957, the annual production of ingots and bars quadrupled – the increase was particularly marked during 1956 and 1957. Steel was sold competitively in New Zealand, India, South Africa, Finland, Greece, Jamaica, Trinidad, Guinea, the Philippines, Cyprus, Iraq, Sudan, Kuwait and Malaya.

During the post war years of the 1950s a distinctive feature of the steel industry throughout the world was the rapid expansion of productive capacity. World production of crude steel was estimated to be at the rate of 300 million tons as compared with 190 million tons in 1950. The increase in productive capacity was necessitated by the increase in steel consumption per head of population in every country. In USA the apparent consumption per head of population in 1955 was more than double that in 1937/38. In the United Kingdom and Germany the increase was of the order of 60 per cent as both countries developed and expanded their country’s economy.  The annual consumption of merchant steel products in Ireland averaged about 44,000 tons. The use of Haulbowline Mills was to meet those tonnage needs.

By September 1958, an extensive programme of expansion of the operations of Irish Steel Holdings was proposed incorporating an additional 200 workers on top of 450 workers. The development proposals comprised the expansion of its open hearth furnace capacity, the casting of large ingots, which were to be rolled in a new building into a wide range of finished and semi-finished sections, and the adaptation and mechanisation of existing steel making processes. These new ideas aimed to make the plant meet the requirements of a larger and more varied production especially in the manufacture of sheet steel from bars produced in the new mill. The construction contracts totalling £400,000 embraced the foundations required for the expansion of the existing steel works at Haulbowline and also the re-construction and extension of its Spencer Jetty for the increased traffic envisaged in the development scheme.  The Haulbowline Scheme was also part of a white paper – a five year plan – laid before both Houses of the Oireachtas by Seán Lemass, which would see additional capital expenditure being invested into agriculture, fisheries, industry, and telephones. The white paper was formally proposed in November 1958, envisaging a capital expenditure of £220million.

To be continued…

 

Caption:

737a. Haulbowline Island from Queenstown/ Cobh. c.1900 – pre Steel Mill been constructed on left of picture (source: Cork City Museum)

Kieran’s Question to the City Manager and Motions, Cork City Council Meeting, 14 April 2014

Kieran's Council Work, Uncategorized

 

Question to the Manager:

To ask the manager for an update on the revamp of Boole House on Bachelor’s Quay? (Cllr Kieran McCarthy)

 

Motions:

 

That the Council look at the dangerous section of road at the cul-de-sac hill and entrance to Beaumont Park on Silverdale Ave opposite house no 32, 34 and 36. The problem is that some drivers parking on the hill going to the park or up to Beaumont school don’t apply their hand break properly. Three times in about 6 months, cars have come down the hill in reverse and knocked down the pillar and wall dividing no 32 and 34 (Cllr Kieran McCarthy).

 

That the footpaths in Baltimore Lawn, Douglas Road receive urgent repair work; some are major trip hazards (Cllr Kieran McCarthy).

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 10 April 2014

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

736a. Heritage relationships, Grand Parade boardwalk with Holy Trinity Church and Parliament Bridge, 17 March 2014

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 10 April 2014

Cork City Heritage Plan, 2014-2018

 

The new Cork City Heritage Plan (2014-2018) is an action plan and sets out a series of realistic and practical actions to protect conserve and manage the city’s heritage over the next five years and a methodology on the implementation of these actions. The draft reports outlines that Cork City’s heritage is diverse, vibrant and can be seen all around us. It includes archaeology, built heritage, natural heritage and cultural heritage together with our archives, museum, libraries and other collections. Other important elements of our heritage include landscapes, geology, and parks. It also includes local history and folklore, turns of phrase and accents, local customs and traditional food.

Cork City Heritage Plan 2007-2012 was the first plan of its kind in Cork City. The plan had four principal objectives and there were forty seven actions covering all aspects of heritage protection and focusing on built heritage, archaeology, cultural heritage and natural heritage. Perhaps the more successful elements were the hands-on elements such as Heritage Open day, which recently won Best Interactive Event for National Heritage
Week 2013. Other successful actions included publications e.g. a Guide to the Record of Protected Structures and A Guide to Nature in the City (which is very much worthwhile googling and downloading to read), Surveys and Studies e.g. the Bridges of Cork City, Development of Heritage Trails in Cork City, Training e.g. Seminar on Ironwork in Cork City, Museum Basics, Events e.g. Cork Heritage Open Day and Heritage Week, and annual projects such as the Cork City Heritage Grants Scheme and the Discover Cork Schools Heritage Project.

The new draft plan does not contain actions on every aspect of heritage, as this would be impossible to achieve in five years. A conscious decision was made by the diligent Heritage Officer Niamh Twomey to keep to a realistic number of actions and in so doing 30 priority actions were identified. However, the draft plan calls for the public to respond to it. Niamh rightly comments that “heritage is more than just the individual material assets and environment of a place. It is also about the relationship between all these elements and the people of Cork City. In truth heritage is all of these things. It is what we as a community have inherited from the past and it is what defines our city, making it unique and separate from any other place”.

Stand on any public space in Cork and one can view is a city of contrasts and is a mixture of many varied cultural traditions. As the draft plan denotes; “ The heritage of Cork City maps and mirrors this diverse and continuous change in Cork and its citizens, from the Vikings through to the Victorians and into the modern day. It is this heritage which helps make Cork City the vibrant and interesting place it is today”. All elements of heritage can be experienced in Cork City. The archaeology of the city can be seen in the medieval street pattern of the North and South Main Streets, the historic graveyards such as St Joseph’s and St Finbarr’s and medieval and early post medieval structures such as Red Abbey Tower and Elizabeth Fort. Cork’s industrial archaeology and historic remains still survive in the contemporary City e.g. the Butter Market in Shandon and the bonded warehouse in the Port of Cork.  Natural heritage has also always thrived in Cork, no doubt due to its estuarine and wetland origins. Many mammals, birds, invertebrates and wild plants have adapted to life alongside humans in our urban landscape.

There are four objectives of the draft heritage Plan. Firstly, caring and managing our heritage is at the core of what the plan sets out to do. This is achieved through promoting best practice and encouraging the care, conservation and protection of our heritage. Secondly, the need for better communication of the heritage message was one of the clearest outcomes from the heritage plan review process. Good communication is required to raise awareness of heritage issues and garner public support for the protection and care of our heritage while also facilitating greater enjoyment of Cork City’s rich heritage for everyone. Heritage events will play a key role in attracting more people to explore and enjoy their heritage.  Thirdly support education, research and training is key. Learning more about our heritage by collaborating with collecting and research institutions and bodies and commissioning research which adds to our knowledge, is important, as is providing training opportunities for those interested in managing their local heritage.  The fourth objective is to increase level of community activity for heritage and forge stronger links with business and tourist interests. Heritage groups and organisations, dedicated individuals and local communities play a key role in caring for and raising awareness of our heritage and in adding to our knowledge of our heritage.

The draft Cork City Heritage Plan is available to download from www.corkcityheritage.ie/newsandevents or by contacting the Heritage Officer at heritage@corkcity.ie or tel. 021 4924086. The closing date for comments is Friday 25 April 2014.  Please forward all submissions in writing to Niamh Twomey, Heritage Officer, Cork City Council, City Hall, Cork. 

 

Caption:

 

736a. ‘Heritage relationships’, Grand Parade boardwalk with Holy Trinity Church and Parliament Bridge, 17 March 2014 (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 4 April 2014

Cork City Events, Cork History, Kieran's Council Work, Landscapes, Uncategorized

735a. Illustration of central industrial hall, Cork International Exhibition 1902

 

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 4 April 2014

Talk on Cork’s Exhibitions

Next week on Wednesday morning, on 9 April, as part of Cork Lifelong Learning Festival, I present a public lecture on a history of Cork Exhibitions (10.30am, Meeting room, Church of the Real Presence, Curaheen).  Cork has had three exhibitions (1852, 1883 & 1902/3) and one fair (1932). All put the city in a highly visible place in Irish public life and in the popular imagination. All developed social tools to push forward an ideology, representation and symbolism that marked Cork’s and Ireland’s place in the British empire under British rule and in the context of the 1932 fair in the early twentieth century.

The exhibitions were the brain child of Cork’s social elite. The exhibitions became a marketing strategy where spectacle and culture merged. Aesthetics of architecture, colour, decoration and lighting were all added to the sense of spectacle and in a tone of moral and educational improvement. The events also aimed to consolidate ideologically and extend the authority of the city’s corporate, political and scientific leadership. Each stand in its own way promoted ideas about the relations of the Cork city and other nations, the spread of education, the advancement of science, the nature of domestic life and the place of art in society.

The 1902 exhibition, for example, had several hundred exhibits on display from May to October in the Mardyke in prefabricated timber buildings. The main categories of exhibits included a women’s section, raw materials section, geological specimens section, natural history section, modern science section, archaeological and historical section, raw materials industrially treated section, forestry section, educational section and a nature study section. By the close of the Exhibition, over one million people had visited the Cork site. The newspapers of the day wrote about the exhibition enchanting and diverting the masses from more serious matters such as unemployment and housing conditions.

The ideals and symbols of the exhibitions were even magnified for their opening day where the Exhibition organisers sought to embrace the wider public. The Cork exhibitions presented a national narrative of modernity – how the fusion of Irish national values were reflected and materialised. The opening day on 1 May 1902 was observed as a general holiday. The large drapery houses remained closed till 2 pm by which the procession had passed through the thoroughfares. From an early hour, people anxious to watch the spectacle densely crowded advantage points. Special trains ran on all the railway systems converging on the city. Previous to the procession, various trades, national bodies, city bands and county contingents formed in Anglesea Street at the Municipal Building

A lavish opening ceremony marked the opening outlined key speeches that were made. The Concert Hall possessed comfortable seating accommodation in the auditorium for two thousand persons, while the organ loft afforded ample room.  The opening speeches embraced a forward looking universalising future, a creative entrepreneurialism, the quest to create a spectacle of technological innovation whilst engaging a national past.  They asserted difference while maintaining internal communication within an Empire culture.  

 

The Cork Examiner noted of the canata “The Building of the Ship” being performed. The canata had been especially composed for the Leeds Musical Festival of 1886 and was written by Henry Wadeworth Longfellow and composed by John Francis Barnett. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a commanding figure in the cultural life of nineteenth-century America. Born in Portland, Maine, in 1807, he became a national literary figure by the 1850s, and a world- famous personality by the time of his death in 1882. Henry Wadeworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include Paul Revere’s Ride, The Song of Hiawatha and Evangeline. He was also the first American to translate Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy.

The story of the Building of the Ship poem deals with the Master who heard his merchant’s word with delight and who designed the model of a ship of modern mould, built for “freight and yet for speed, a beautiful and gallant craft, which was to be completed by a youth, “the heir of desterity”, who when he had built and launched the ship, was to receive the hand of the old man’s daughter. The vessel was to be built of “cedar of Maine and Georgia Pine”- indicating the northern and southern states of the US – and the “ Union” was to be her name.

The whole process of construction is elaborately and eloquently described, how the heavy hammers and mallets were plied until at length at the mast head the stars and stripes unrolled and all is finished and the bridal day is the day of the launching. The poem concluded; “Then, too sail on, O Ship of State, Sail on, O Union, strong and great”. The poem was read in Cork to symbolise the unity of purpose of Industrial Ireland – north and south – how the project was built up and how on its completion it was publicly launched with the best wishes of all classes of the community, with the hope that it may be “safe from all adversity”. These sentiments are also echoed in the origins of many of the stands at the 1902 Exhibition, with many coming from the southern and northern Ireland (more at the lecture).

 

Caption:

735a. Illustration of central industrial hall, Cork International Exhibition, 1902 (source: Cork Museum)

Draft Cork City Heritage Plan 2014-2018

Cork History, Improve Your Life, Kieran's Council Work, Landscapes, S.E. Ward Local History, Uncategorized

The draft Cork City Heritage Plan 2014-2018 is now available for public comment. 

 
The Cork City Heritage Plan is an action plan and sets out a series of realistic and practical actions to protect conserve and manage our heritage over the next five years and a methodology on the implementation of these actions.  The formulation of what is the second Heritage Plan for Cork City presents an opportunity to build on the achievements of the previous plan and to renew the efforts to protect, manage and promote Cork City’s heritage. The aim of the draft Cork City Heritage Plan 2014-2018 is “To protect and promote the heritage of Cork City and to place the care of our heritage at the heart of the community”
 
Organisations and individuals are invited to make submissions and express their views and opinions on what they believe are key heritage issues in the city and what they would like to see in the new Heritage Plan.
 
The draft Cork City Heritage Plan is available to download from www.corkcityheritage.ie/newsandevents  or by contacting the Heritage Officer at heritage@corkcity.ie or tel 021 4924086
 
The closing date for comments is Friday 25th of April 2014.  Please forward all submissions in writing to
Niamh Twomey, Heritage Officer, Cork City Council, City Hall, Cork, Or email to heritage@corkcity.ie