Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 6 December 2012

“Cork Publications”

I’ve had a few queries over the last number of weeks from people trying to get compilations of the articles in this column over the years. As yet, many of the articles have not been compiled. I have penned a number of books, some arising out of parts of the columns and some private commissions. Those based on parts on this column that are not sold out can be got from Waterstones on St Patrick’s Street and Liam Ruiseall’s. The titles can be viewed below. The launch of the new book as discussed last week entitled, Cork City Through Time is on Thursday 13 December 2012 at the Cork Museum, Fitzgerald’s Park at 6.30pm and all are welcome.

Discover Cork (2003) was published by the O’Brien Press in Dublin as part of their National town guide series and summaries some of the early columns of Our City, Our Town. A great ABC book to how the city developed with maps and pictures. Part one focuses on the key stages of the city’s growth from early times. Part two focuses on several of the city’s views, river locations, buildings and artworks.

The book In the Steps of St Finbarre, Voices and Memories of the Lee Valley (2006) was the first in the River Lee series to be published and focuses on the journey of the Lee and the key places of settlement, monuments and community leaders all the way along the valley. It contains alot of original material previously not drawn together. The valley is an area rich in ancient history, and a wealth of geographical detail and historical background is explored and explained in this book. The geography of the valley is varied and ever-changing, and the River Lee’s progress through its many different townlands to disgorge at Cork Harbour and into the Irish Sea is carefully charted while telling the story of local saints such as St Finbarre, and of the origins of many of the townland names.

Generations: Memories of the Lee Hydroelectric Scheme (2008) was a book co-written with Seamus O’Donoughue. The work was published by the ESB to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Inniscarra Dam on the River Lee being commissioned. The work contains many pictures of the Lee Scheme being constructed and pictures of the ‘before and after’ of the affected landscape. It also profiles the positives and negatives of such an extensive venture for its day.  The ever-growing need to provide an improved level of electricity service for existing customers, as well as the new demands created by an ambitious programme for rural electrification, set in motion the process for the building of the Lee stations and the damming of the valley. This was a colossal task, and necessitated years of minute planning, geographical surveys and preservation orders on, for example, The Gearagh region, and land purchase, with the final contracts for the works in place towards the end of 1952.

 Detailed land acquisition records and newspaper documentation afford a fascinating glimpse into what must have been an enormous upheaval for the 200 families involved, many of whom relocated elsewhere as the valley was flooded and their homes were submerged. The success of the enterprise depended on the effective deployment of manpower (650 personnel, many of them highly trained or skilled), both from home and abroad. This is narrated by way of interviews with the men and women whose lives were shaped by the Carrigadrohid and Inniscarra dams. The sheer scale of the project required a sophisticated infrastructure of housing, lodging, catering and entertainment as workers were drafted in from not only the Cork region but from all over Europe.

Inheritance, Heritage and Memory in the Lee Valley (2010) was based on the series of articles that featured in the Cork Independent from October 2007 to June 2009. It documents my explorations in the parishes of Aghabullogue, Inniscarra and Ovens on the northern valleyside on Inniscarra Reservoir, part of the course of the River Lee. Inheritance dabbles in the architecture of heritage and its interaction with life in the River Lee Valley. For me, the essence of the book is focussed on the beauty and structure of ordinary ‘things’ that one may take for granted but which highlight, debate and celebrate our cultural heritage. This book is about a journey in seeking out the sense of place in the Lee Valley, a valley that has grasped my imagination and fails to let go. With all that in mind, Inheritance attempts to capture my explorations, the many moods and colours of a section of the River Lee Valley, to contemplate new ways of seeing, to rediscover the characters who have interacted with it, the major events and the minor common happenings and to construct a rich and vivid mosaic of life by and on the River Lee. Above all this book is not what we have lost but what we have yet to find in our localities and communities.

For more on my books that may be for sale on internet sites, check out my full publication list on www.corkheritage.ie and/or Google the titles there.

Caption:

 670a. Christmas in the Park, Bishop Lucey Park, December 2012 (picture: Kieran McCarthy)