Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,
Cork Independent, 6 June 2013
Kieran’s City Walking Tours, June 2013
This year I bring the summer walking tours of Cork City centre back during the month of June, on Tuesday evenings (11th, 18th, 25th), and Friday evening, 14th. The tours begin at the National Monument on the Grand Parade, at 7pm on those evenings and explore the City Centre’s early development on a swamp. The tour costs e.10 per person and children under 12 are free. No booking is required, just turn up on the evening. Further information if needed can be attained from me at 0876553389.
The tour is based on my publication Discover Cork, which was published ten years ago as a guide to the city’s history. In this book I outline the city’s development and it opens with eminent Cork writer Daniel Corkery’s account of the city in his The Threshold of Quiet (1917) which highlights well the physical landscape of Cork City:
“Leaving us, the summer visitor says in his good humoured way that Cork is quite a busy place…as hundrum a collection of odds and ends as ever went by the name of city – are flung higgledy piggledy together into a narrow double-streamed, many bridged river valley, jostled and jostling, so compacted that the mass throws up a froth and flurry that confuses the stray visitor…for him this is Cork”.
One of the distinct questions that arises out of his narrative relates to the query, who could have built such a landscape. It was a combination of native and outside influences, primarily people that shaped its changing townscape and society since its origins as a settlement. The city possesses a unique character derived from a combination of its plan, topography, built fabric and its location. Indeed, it is also a city that is unique among other cities, it is the only one which has experienced all phases of Irish urban development, from circa 600 A.D. to the present day.
The settlement began as a monastic centre in the seventh century, overlooking a series of marshy islands on which the present day city centre grew and flourished; it was transformed into a Viking port and the advent of the Anglo-Normans led to the creation of a prosperous walled town; it grew through the influx of English colonists during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and suffered the political problems inherent in Irish Society at that time; it was altered significantly again through Georgian and Victorian times when reclamation of its marshes became a priority along with the construction of spacious streets and grand town houses; its docks, warehouses exhibit the impact of the industrial revolution; and in the last one hundred years, Corkonians have witnessed both the growth of extensive suburbs and the rejuvenation of the inner city.
Perhaps, the most important influence in the city’s development is the River Lee, an element which has witnessed the city grow from monastic Cork through the Celtic Tiger City of the twenty-first century. Originally, the city centre was a series of marshy islands, which the Irish for the city, “Corcaigh” translated marshes reflects. The river splits into two channels just west of the city centre, and hence flows around the city centre, leaving it in an island situation. The urban centre was built on the lowest crossing point of the River Lee, where the river meets the sea. Built on the surrounding valleysides of the River Lee, the city’s suburbs are constructs of the twentieth century where a spiralling population dictated Cork’s expansion beyond its municipal boundaries.
Spliced with the city’s physical development is the story of its people and their contribution in making Cork a city whose history is rich and colourful. The characters are astute, confident, and are often rebellious, a distinctive trait of Corkonians through the ages and are remembered in Cork songs, statues, street-names and oral tradition. Corkonians make Cork unique. Their characteristics have been noted through the centuries, from visitors to antiquarian writers. All agree that its people are warm and very sociable. Joking is an essential characteristic of Corkonians. As one antiquarian, Byran Cody in 1859 put it, conversational power is the test of intellectual culture in Cork. A Corkonian is a good talker and the conversation is usually seasoned with spicy anecdotes and pleasant bits of scandal.
A walk through St Patrick Street or affectionately known as ‘Pana’ will reveal the warmth of its people, the rich accent, the hustle and bustle of a great city. As Robert Gibbings, poet and writer put it in 1944, “Cork is the loveliest city in the world, anyone who doesn’t agree with me either was not born there or is prejudiced. The streets are wide, the quays are clean, the bridges are noble and people that you have never met in your life stop you in the street for a conversation”. Not only can each person tell you a story about Cork but its streets, buildings and bridges also do. They echo the rich historic and cultural development of the acclaimed southern capital of Ireland.
Back to technical education each week…
Caption:
694a. Bishop Lucey Park in recent sunshine (picture: Kieran McCarthy)