Kieran McCarthy’s summer walking tours of Cork City centre will take place 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 Kieran at 0876553389.
On Saturday, 22 June, the Friends of St Finbarr’s Hospital will be holding its annual garden party from 1.30 to 4.30 pm. As part of a whole series of events planned, Cllr Kieran McCarthy invites the general public to take part in a historical walking tour of St. Finbarre’s Hospital at 12noon. (meet at gate; the event is free as part of Cllr McCarthy’s community work). The workhouse, which opened in December 1841, was an isolated place – built beyond the toll house and toll gates, which gave entry to the city and which stood just below the end of the wall of St. Finbarr’s Hospital in the vicinity of the junction of the Douglas and Ballinlough Roads. The Douglas Road workhouse was also one of the first of over 130 workhouses to be designed by the Poor Law Commissioners’ architect George Wilkinson.
To mark the day of the actual fiftieth anniversary of John F Kennedy receiving the freedom of the city and taking off by helicopter from what is now Kennedy Park, Cllr Kieran McCarthy’s tour of Cork Docklands will take place on Friday, 28 June leaving at 7pm from Kennedy Park, Victoria Road (free, 1 1/2 hours). Some of the themes covered in the talk will be John F Kennedy’s visit to Cork and the development of the areas surrounding Albert Road and the Docklands itself.