Monthly Archives: November 2014

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 27 November 2014

Uncategorized

770a. Postcard of Cork Harbour, definitely a landscape to explore and see

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent,  27 November 2014

Cork Harbour Memories (Part 1) – The Edge of Memory

 

     To begin a series on the histories and the cultural DNA of Cork Harbour, the question is where to start. There is so much in the region to write about, much of which will appear in this column over the next couple of months. The second largest natural harbour in the world is a very special place to explore. At this point in time, the celebration of the bicentenary of the foundation stone of the Cork Harbour Commissioners building on Custom House Quay is a significant milestone. The current and ongoing conversations about a new diaspora centre for Cork are key talking points which tourist bodies in the city are attempting to flesh out. Themes such as maritime Cork, migrations, emigration, trade, and historical defensive structures are all coming to the fore of heritage conversations in the region.

    The sixty or so cruise liners that come to Cobh every year hark back to an age where passenger ships were regular visitors to the harbour and to an age of coming, going and disappearing for visitors and emigrants. The development of Spike Island by Fáilte Ireland and Cork County Council, and Camden Fort Meagher being developed by an energetic community volunteers, shows the move more and more to celebrate the harbour’s memories and to mine it for stories that may help the region’s future economy and cultural progress. However, there is a sense that both latter topics – industry and culture – jar or clash against each other in this coastal space. For example I always think that the mid twentieth century industrial monuments such as Whitegate Oil Refinery seem to clash with structures like Martello towers and star shaped forts. But perhaps all are monuments of their age but with different functions, stories and aesthetic issues.

     The sense of jarring also exists with the telling, remembering and forgetting of stories in the harbour. There are pockets right around it where in some cases there are no history information panels on display, especially at sites where you might expect one. For example at Roches Point, the ultimate coastal monument (built in 1835) dominates a cliff edge as if it is saying hello and goodbye to the harbour’s visitors, but sadly offers no information panels to read. However, if anything the disparate pockets of lack of information points to how as a region we do need to create awareness of what cultural nuggets we have on our doorstep. We should up our awareness of such nuggets and respect how they do add to our quality of life and that we do need mind them for future generations to inherit.

    Looking at a basic Ordnance Survey map of the Cork region, the city’s lined delineation make it sit in the harbour’s north west corner. In an abstract way the city looks like it is putting weight on the harbor pushing it into the Irish sea – in a way enhancing the harbour’s edges and its multiple coastal histories. On a good sunny day you can see the water tower for Cobh from the top of the tower of St Anne’s Church Shandon and the rolling and beautiful fieldscapes which seem to fall and interlock like a river of different shaded greens into the Lee’s estuary. It possesses very beautiful scenery, which many painters have had fun engaging with and romanticising about. One of interest is Cork-born and amateur landscape artist Henry Morgan. In 1849 he published a series of 28 colourful lithographs of the harbour. Cork City Libraries holds a copy of these and have recently posted them on their corkpastandpresent.ie website. You can almost see the painter rooted in the landscape windswept by south easterly winds and perhaps encouraging him to hurry his creation.

   On any good weather day, there are parts of the region where one can almost drive across its sun kissed mudflats. From the Cork-Midleton dual carriage way you get to appreciate farmer’s attempts of reclamation through the ages and the broad mudflats which serve as a home for international bird habitats. There are sections of the harbour to be viewed from the road, which seem almost forgotten. I’m a big fan of the Smith Barry tower house folly, which belonged to Fota House estate and which exists on the edge of the Fota golf course.

   In the early nineteenth century Smith-Barry had the tower designed by Cork architect John Hargrave. It was built in a Tudor Gothic Revival style and its footprint can be seen from different locations surrounding it. It was used by the Smith-Barry family as a hunting lodge. During the last part of the twentieth century the estate fell into disrepair. Fota House was restored but the folly was left to fall into ruin. The tower is a homage to an interest in ancient history and stands tall as if reaching into its skyline leaving its overall stone blocked vision hanging poetically in the air. I like the idea of seeing the harbour as a kind of cul-de-sac, where multi-layered memories gel into the contoured landscape, creating a type of cultural glue. Indeed, the more you dig into it in a sense the more it gets under your skin making you want to explore the harbour more.

To be continued…

Caption:

770a. Postcard of Cork Harbour, 1902, definitely a landscape to explore and see! (source: Cork Harbour Through Time, 2014 & Cork City Museum)

Kieran’s New Book, Cork Harbour Through Time, November, 2014)

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

Cork Harbour Through Time By Kieran McCarthy and Dan Breen

 

   How do you capture a harbour in all its beauty? Being the second largest natural harbour in the world brings a focus and energy that Cork Harbour has always been open to. The ebb and flow of the tide through the ages has carved a unique landscape of cliffs, sand and gravel beaches that expose an underlining geology of limestone and sandstone. Invigorating this landscape are multiple monuments from different ages, many of which the postcards in Kieran McCarthy and Dan Breen seek to capture.

  Colourful villages provide different textures and cultural landscapes in a sort of cul-de-sac environment, with roads ending at harbours and car parks near coastal cliff faces and quaysides. The villages are scattered around the edges of the harbour, each with their own unique history, all connecting in someway to the greatness of this harbour. Walking along several junctures of fields, one can get the feeling you are at the ‘edge of memory’. There are the ruins of old structures that the tide erodes away. One gets the sense that a memory is about to get swept away by the sea, or that by walking in the footsteps trodden by photographers 100 years ago, one could get carried away by their curiosity. This new book tracks the space and historical context of 100 postcards in Cork Harbour, many of which were taken c. 1900–20.

Cork Harbour Through Time can be bought in many Cork bookshops.

Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ireland-Europe-Countries-Regions-Books/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=node%3D279716&field-keywords=cork+harbour+through+time&rh=n%3A279716%2Ck%3Acork+harbour+through+time&ajr=1

Kieran’s New Book, Cork Harbour Through Time, 20 November 2014

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

Cork Harbour Through Time By Kieran McCarthy and Dan Breen

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town,

Cork Independent, 20 November 2014

Kieran’s New Book – Cork Harbour Through Time

 

     How do you capture a harbour in all its beauty? Being the second largest natural harbour in the world brings a focus and energy that Cork Harbour has always been open to. The ebb and flow of the tide through the ages has carved a unique landscape of cliffs, sand and gravel beaches that expose an underlining geology of limestone and sandstone. Invigorating this landscape are multiple monuments from different ages, many of which the postcards in my new book with Dan Breen seek to capture.

     Colourful villages provide different textures and cultural landscapes in a sort of cul-de-sac environment, with roads ending at harbours and car parks near coastal cliff faces and quaysides. The villages are scattered around the edges of the harbour, each with their own unique history, all connecting in someway to the greatness of this harbour. Walking along several junctures of fields, one can get the feeling you are at the ‘edge of memory’. There are the ruins of old structures that the tide erodes away. One gets the sense that a memory is about to get swept away by the sea, or that by walking in the footsteps trodden by photographers 100 years ago, one could get carried away by their curiosity. This new book tracks the space and historical context of 100 postcards in Cork Harbour, many of which were taken c. 1900–20.

     Many of the sites have been written extensively on over centuries, while others await proper exploration and critique. Chapter 1 begins in the city and takes the reader from Ireland’s southern capital of Cork City eastwards into the River Lee’s tidal estuary. This city is built on a shifting landscape of sand, gravel, rushes and reeds, a wetland knitted together to form a working port through the ages. In Cork City Through Time (2012), we showcased the old postcards of Cork City. Moving eastwards past the port, the river begins to spread in width, creating vast scenic vistas along areas like the marina, extending to the late seventeenth-century structure of Blackrock Castle and beyond, to the reed beds of Lough Mahon and Douglas Estuary. All are hidden places of beauty, much of which may be explored by the amenity walk along the old Blackrock & Passage Railway Line. When the line opened in 1850, it hosted 200,000 people in the first six months. In 1903, this line was later extended to Crosshaven. The resonances of such a venture are echoed along the walkway as old platforms, ivy clad stone-arch bridges provide legacies to admire. Passage, the first terminus for the railway, was once a shipbuilding centre of the south of Ireland. Nowadays, old quaysides and eerie, abandoned warehouses haunt the area. One can almost hear the hammers and whispers of workers’ repairing and patching together ocean-going ships. Further along the river, Monkstown provides insight into the past with its colourful Victorian mansions.

     The same can be said about the scenic wooded village of Glanmire, the iconic Father Mathew Tower and Fota House. All exist as rich storehouses of memory and are awe-inspiring to walk around at any time of the year. Chapter 2 takes the reader on a journey through some of the landscapes on Great Island, and naturally Cobh is a central focus. Drawn through several centuries and photographed since the invention of the camera, it is difficult not to be drawn to the town’s rich architectural steeple and exterior artwork on the late nineteenth-century construct of St Colman’s Cathedral. Cobh has stunning scenic quay vistas and a colourful selection of buildings. The town is also known for its stories of emigration and the legendary Titanic. One can feel its journey across the ocean and the role the town played in its part in the North Atlantic’s human history.

    The sites and spaces seen from Cobh’s specifically constructed building parapets are explored in Chapter 3. The harbour islands such as Spike Island and Haulbowline have histories dating back over 400 years. They were first fortified by star-shaped forts and secured for the expanding British Empire. Two more forts exist near the entrance to the Harbour, Camden Fort Meagher and Fort Davis. Originally built in the 1780s, one can explore the town’s military history and connections to a far-flung British empire through the harbour’s role in securing its might and power. However, one is humbled by stories of the Irish War of Independence and how these forts in time were secured by the Irish Government as Ireland’s last lines of defence. Today, these represent large community-based tourism projects.

    Chapter 4 explores the eastern shores of Cork Harbour. Here lies the great market town of Midleton, the old large malthouses of Ballincurra, the ancient tower at Cloyne, the quaint spaces within villages at Rostellan and Whitegate, and the ruins of old houses. Connect these with industrial projects such as Whitegate Oil Refinery, and family holiday centres such as Trabolgan, and all reveal rich stories. However, standing overlooking all within the harbour is the great lighthouse at Roches Point, warning ships of imposing rocks and providing a grand entrance gateway to the harbour. On a clear day, the views show a canvass of stories and memories.

Caption:

769a. Cork Harbour Through Time by Kieran McCarthy & Dan Breeen (published by Amberley Press, November 2014)

 

Kieran’s Comments, Cork City Council Budget Meeting

Kieran's Council Work, Uncategorized

Cork City Council Budget Meeting,

17 November 2014, Cllr Kieran McCarthy

The Garden of the Council

 Lord Mayor,

I was listening to an old interview with President Erskine Childers this morning on RTE player and he referred to politics as a garden where different parts of it to be tended to in order to have an overall healthy picture or nation.

It is fair to say that this Council’s garden six years/ seven years ago was in great nick, well attended to, a strong stage presence as such, there were regular barbeques, almost Greekesque in their view as we look back now with rose tinted glasses, the fine wine flowed in a sense, and the sun seemed to shine more on the finances back then. There were great hazy days in the sun.

But my how the financial plaque has swept through this Council’s garden. Our directorate crops have been eaten away at, leaving their roots in shambles, and some will never return in the short term. Some parts of our garden are bordering on barren and many of our orchards have been slogged back to their branches. We lost 367 staff over the last number of years and only gained 11. One gets the impression we are just hanging in there like a tree with fruit that a north Dublin wind wants to take more from.

Since 2009 central government have constantly eaten away at our municipal programmes. We are windswept but interestingly still standing, just almost, and resilient.

The digging into our crop reserves is not positive. Digging into the rainy day fund will put this city under further pressure.

I see in the third paragraph of the draft report this evening (p3) the terms “ we are bringing a financial balance” which Tim Healy and his team painstakingly put together every year. We’re lucky to have the knowledge that Tim has of the broad spectrum of our accounts and I welcome the broad allocation of funds across the directorates from Housing, roads, environment to arts, culture and heritage.

But there isn’t a balance in terms of the limits that are on this city’s development arising out of these continuous series of status quo’s budgets. The existence of strict budgetary controls is continuing to affect services. The retention of a status quo is not good for a city and region such as Cork

One of the key highlights of this year’s budget is apparent on p.3; ward funds are being retained. That’s what we have been reduced to on the first page of our budget document. There is nothing wrong with having ward funds but that is the discretionary fund that we as councillors have in 2015.

Frameworks that we have to provide funding for this city are inadequate; on one scale they are pushing those to the limits, to larger financial struggles, whether it be ratepayers or those that pay the local property tax.

The frightening aspect is with both, LPG and Rates, our largest scale pots of incomes, the money raised is not enough to really make a go in developing the policies of our various directorates. Our service provision across all directorates are set at a minimum.

Indeed, without real reform of Local Government people are essentially paying more and getting less. That’s the reality of the overall picture of our garden. The government talk about their “putting people first” programme but when all is said they are “putting people paying first”.

This Council going forward is now dependent on levies on development, we’re dependent on some kind of boom to top up our funds. We need to sit down and have a serious chat to central government.

The national and wider frameworks of how we fund this Council need to be seriously addressed and not put on the long finger as what we are seeing.

I propose that in the new year a delegation from this Council does meet the Minister and that our financial plagued garden is explained to him and that a more sustainable approach can be found.

Thanks Lord Mayor

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 13 November 2014

Cork History, Kieran's Council Work, Uncategorized

768a. Memories and histories, Oliver Plunkett Street

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 13 November 2014

Memories of Oliver Plunkett Street

 

     It is true to say that Cork City and County is lucky with the calibre of dedicated Council library staff, who bring their enthusiasm and knowledge to bear on their collections. Since 1892, Cork City Libraries has provided a service to the citizens of Cork. Part of that valuable service has been a local history element for the people of Cork and beyond, as well as for researchers, students of all ages, and writers.

    For nearly forty years, the enormous collections of local history materials that Cork City proudly possesses was developed and minded by recently retired librarian Kieran Burke, who for all intensive purposes, was their guardian. Up to a decade ago, the city’s library service was available only to people calling in person to the library premises. However, since 2004, online library services are available through two websites: (i) the general library website at CorkCityLibraries.ie (where, for example, you can search the book catalogue or request and renew borrowed items), and (ii) the popular Cork Past and Present website.  

      For over a century, if an enquirer wanted to check a historical map of Cork, or if they wanted to check an old street directory showing who lived in what street or what business was carried on there, they would have had to call to the library premises — and only during opening hours. Now since 2004, with the online service of the Cork Past and Present website, people can browse the local history treasures of the Library from the comfort of their homes, from their place of work or recreation, or while travelling, or even when out of the country.

    City Librarian Liam Ronayne has driven the expansion of online library services since his appointment as City Librarian in 2004. He established a special eLibrary Services department to develop online library resources. Arising from these developments more material is digitized every year and added to the Library webpages, providing 24/7 access to anyone requiring it. For nine months up to last summer, three new sections to its websites were developed. The first section deals with two decades of theatre in Cork city from 1972 to 1991 showing 4,000 high-quality photographs of theatre productions in Cork. Another new web section presents brief accounts of the Shandon area with some images. The third addition contributes to understanding the stronger identity, which pervades in Oliver Plunkett Street, a vital and busy spine running through our city centre. As well as having intrinsic interest, these new web pages support the efforts of the businesses in our city streets to focus greater attention on the historic and overall attractions of the city centre. With so much nostalgia in the City Centre, it offers a rich cultural experience hard to beat.

     The new web pages on Oliver Plunkett Street explore the historical development of the street from its beginnings in the early eighteenth century – the challenges posed by building on a marshland, a number of buildings of significance on the street, and also charts the history of some of the long-standing retailers synonymous with Oliver Plunkett Street. Some of the intriguing images show an auction of greyhounds in the former Conway’s Yard, now part of Casey’s furniture store and car park. Other pages remind one that the lovely limestone-clad building behind the EuroGiant shop was once a nineteenth century Congregational Chapel, or that today’s Saville menswear shop was a cinema (the Imperial Cinema) from 1913 until the 1950s. The Karizma Turkish barber shop on the corner of Oliver Plunkett Street and Princes Street was the site of the city’s first purpose-built theatre which opened in 1732 and operated out of there until the Theatre Royal moved in 1760 to where the GPO is today, where the theatre house survived until the postal authorities purchased the premises in 1875.

   Notable for its striking Tudor-revival facades and indoor architecture one can read about the history of Winthrop Arcade. It was officially opened by Lord Mayor Seán French on 1 May 1926. The arcade was one of the first shopping malls opened in Ireland and survives today in its original design and purpose. The man responsible for establishing the arcade was Cork businessman Patrick Crowley. Guy’s business directory for 1913 records that he operated a public house named ‘The Arch’, at 7 Winthrop Street. His business and properties on the site of the future arcade were destroyed by rampaging British forces during the Burning of Cork in December 1920. He invested the financial compensation he received following the event, along with funds of his own, to create the Winthrop Arcade.

    Other retailers, including, Liam Ruiséal Teoranta, Cronin’s Menswear, Casey’s Furniture, Keane’s Jewellers, M J Galligan Furnishing Fabrics, the Uneeda bookshop, and Minihan’s Chemists. There is even a section about Oliver Plunkett Street as an area prone to flooding and its links to the development of the swampland. Cork City Libraries is to be commended for its ongoing efforts to add to the cultural richness of Cork city and for providing greater access both through its seven premises throughout the city and through its webpages, such as this new section on Oliver Plunkett Street, which everyone should browse.

My thanks to John Mullins, Cork City Library and Lord Mayor Cllr Mary Shields for their help with the above piece.

 

Caption:

 

768a. Memories and histories, Oliver Plunkett Street, Present Day (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

Kieran’s Question to the City Manager/ CE and Motions, Cork City Council Meeting, 10 November 2014

Arts, Kieran's Council Work, Uncategorized

Question to the City Manager/ CE

 To ask the CE about the potential of buying the ‘Camden Palace Hotel’, formerly on Camden Quay, to develop as an arts building, continuing what is there. I understand that the ‘hotel’ is being sold by NAMA shortly (Cllr Kieran McCarthy)

 

Motions:

That Alderwood Estate, on South Douglas Road be added to the patch resurfacing roads programme (Cllr Kieran McCarthy)

That an elaborate skate board park be developed in Tramore Valley Park (Cllr Kieran McCarthy)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 6 November 2014

Cork History, Kieran's Council Work, Uncategorized

767a. Crawford Municipal Technical Institute, Cork

 

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article, 

Cork Independent, 6 November 2014

“Technical Memories (Part 93 of 93) – For the Public Good”

 

       In reaching the end of the series on the Crawford Municipal Technical Institute, there are always the plaguing questions of what other sub topics on the Tech that could have been written about. Discontinuing at the development of the new Art College premises and the RTC seems a logical stopping point. More present day local histories require a delicate balancing act between memory, fact and history. Certainly, CIT’s forty year heritage deserves a book on its own charting its rise and significance for this country, socially and economically.

       The story of the Tech is a layered and complex story. To explore these complexities in a methodology sense, I have used mostly Institute archival documents, VEC minute books, and newspapers to tell the great tale of the Crawford Tech. I have used some interviews to expand the narrative. Certainly there is a need to do a proper set of interviews with past pupils and former lecturers on the importance of vocational education in this region.

      Since January 2012 one of the aims of this section of the Our City, Our Town series was to showcase the development of our city as a strong heartland of education and science. The City is lucky that we have archives where one can read about the viewpoints of the leaders of vocational education throughout several decades and how such spaces like the Tech encompass those ideals. Whereas the Tech was a very real space, it also existed as a strong symbol of where Cork and Ireland needed to go in terms of educational progress. Against the backdrop of political campaigns for Home Rule, many demands for investment into Ireland, housing, and attempts to stop large scale emigration, the Agriculture and Technical Instruction (Ireland) Act in 1899 recognised the need for an Irish framework for technical education in an attempt to halt industrial and manufacturing decline. In many parts of the country, young people needed to be mentally challenged, and the schools needed to be become more efficient. There was an almost complete dearth of higher education suited to the latter needs. Concepts of progress in intellectualism and education and energy in idealism swept across the country through the technical institutes. These institutes and their aspirations were the foundations of the country’s regional colleges and universities.

     Concepts of progress at the Crawford Tech followed the economic needs of the country. The hands on approaches in 1912 in subjects such as experimental science, drawing, and manual work, and domestic economy were swept away by the need for understanding the use of large scale mechanised machinery. As outlined throughout this column series, the Tech impressively showed leadership in all its actions, programmes, ongoing discussions and ideas. The technical movement was also open to every Irish man and woman; it did not engage in political or religious difference. Improvement and development became hallmark words when it came to progress. Practical experience and wide knowledge were freely given for the public good. The Crawford Tech’s first principal John H Grindley in one of his first reports wrote about the concept of the public good; “the work of the institute cannot fail to have far reaching affects on the intellectual well being of the workers, in training the intelligence of the leaders of industry”.

     Fast forward in time and one gets the rich and layered leadership stories of industry in the Cork City and harbour region in the 1950s and the creation of a number of large industrial projects – two were developed by the ESB – the Lee hydroelectric scheme and the Marina plant; then there was Whitegate Oil Refinery, Verome Dockyard, Goulding’s Fertilisers and Irish Steel Ltd on Haulbowline. These were followed by the construction of Cork Airport, and developments at Fords and Dunlops at the Marina, Cork City. All of these require further research in terms of their significance in framing the development of Ireland’s industrial culture.

      So many people have passed the doors of the Crawford Tech building over the years. It is a space of inspiration. How many people have been pushed forward and inspired there is incalculable. Its current use as the City’s art college allows visitors at the end of year art exhibitions to wander the old rooms of the Tech. The artworks place their own meaning on the building’s web of corridors and multiple rooms. But beyond that you will see the beauty of Arthur Hill’s red brick structure. Sometimes we as citizens don’t look up enough to appreciate the beautiful and multi-layered architectural styles we have. Arthur Hill (1846-1921) was a reputable architect in his day and has left Cork city with many beautiful architectural set pieces, all of which are worth of multiple studies in themselves. With such a depth of architectural splendour and human histories, the Crawford Tech rightly deserves to be written about and showcased. If you’ve missed any of this series or previous years, log onto my website www.corkheritage.ie in the index section. The end of this series also marks the fifteenth year mark of this column, which I have always attempted to celebrate the stories and memories, which this city and region has to offer. Where to explore next is the big question!

Caption:

767a. Crawford Municipal Technical Institute, Cork, c.1912, now the Crawford College of Art (source: Cork City Library)