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.