Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,
Cork Independent, 8 August 2013
Kieran’s Heritage Week, 17-25 August 2013
National Heritage Week is upon us again at the end of next week (17th – 25th August). It’s going to be a busy week. I have set up a number of events. They are all free and I welcome any public support for the activities outlined below.
Heritage Open Day, Saturday 17 August 2013 – Historical Walking Tour of Cork City Hall; Learn about the early history of Cork City Council; discover the development of the building and visit the Lord Mayor’s Room, 11am, free but ticketed, contact The Everyman Palace, 0214501673 (duration: 75 minutes). The current structure, replaced the old City Hall, which was destroyed in the ‘burning of Cork’ in 1920. It was designed by Architects Jones and Kelly and built by the Cork Company Sisks. The foundation stone was laid by Eamonn de Valera, President of the Executive Council of the State on 9 July 1932.
Heritage Week:
Sunday 18 August 2013 –Making a Venice of the North, Exploring Eighteenth Century Cork City (new tour), explore a world of canals, and eighteenth century Cork society, meet at City Library, Grand Parade, 7pm (free, duration: two hours).
For nearly five hundred years (c.1200-c.1690), the walled port town of Cork, built in a swamp and at the lowest crossing point of the River Lee and the tidal area, remained as one of the most fortified and vibrant walled settlements in the expanding British colonial empire. The walls served as a vast repository of meanings, symbolism, iconography and ideology, as well as symbols of order and social relationships. However, economic growth as well as political events in late seventeenth century Ireland, culminating in the destruction of the city’s core in 1690, provided the catalyst for large-scale change within the urban area. The walls were allowed to decay and this was to inadvertently alter much of the city’s physical, social and economic character in the ensuing century. By John Rocque’s Map of Cork in 1759, the walls of Cork were just a memory- the medieval plan was now a small part in something larger – larger in terms of population from 20,000 to 73,000 plus in terms of a new townscape. A new urban text emerged with new bridges, streets, quays, residences and warehouses built to intertwine with the natural riverine landscape. New communities created new social and cultural landscapes to encounter, several of which are explored on my tours for this year’s heritage week.
The 1759 Map is impressive in its detail. John Rocque (c.1705–62) was a cartographer and engraver of European repute. He could count among his achievements maps of London, Paris, Berlin and Rome. In Britain, his many projects included plans of great gardens, several county and provincial city maps and a great and a great, highly innovative, survey of London which resulted in a 16-sheet map of London and its immediate hinterland (1746), and an immense 24-sheet map of the city itself (also 1746), laid out at a very large scale close to 200 feet to an inch.
The unofficial title of the Venice of the North was given to Cork in the eighteenth century. This was a type of branding exercise, a cultural code in a sense, a reference by native and foreign merchants that Cork was part of several cities in northern Europe (Saint Petersburg, Amsterdam, Bruges, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Hamburg, and Manchester) that contained canals, all compared to the enduring connection with water in Venice, Italy over many centuries. Cork and other cities in northern Europe were to be conditioned by ideas of the ideal city tradition. During the post medieval centuries European artists and engineers began to represent political and social ideas and concepts in graphic terms. In truth, this encouraged planners to imagine the ideal port city as a complete unit of which the river, harbour, or canal was an integral part, conceptually and figuratively. This tour explores these ideas and how they influenced perception and culture in growing eighteenth century ‘Venices of the North’ such as Cork.
Kieran’s other tours are:
Monday 19 August 2012 – Shandon Historical Walking Tour, Discover one of the City’s key historical quarters; learn about St Anne’s Church and the development of butter market and the Shandon Street area, meet at North Gate Bridge, 7pm (free, duration: two hours).
Tuesday 20 August 2013- Blackpool Historical Walking Tour, From Fair Hill to the heart of Blackpool, learn about nineteenth century shambles, schools, convents and industries, meet at North Mon gates, Gerald Griffin Avenue, 7pm (free, duration: two hours).
Thursday 22 August 2013 – From a Workhouse to a Hospital, The Story of St Finbarr’s Hospital, Discover the history of the workhouse, meet at entrance gate, 7pm (free, duration: two hours).
Friday 23 August 2013, “Where the future and the past meet, A historical walking tour of Mahon, to mark the 100th anniversary of Dunlocha Cottages” (new tour), Blackrock Garda Station, top of Avenue De Rennes, Mahon, 7pm (free, duration: 1 ½ hours).
Sunday 25 August 2013, Douglas Historical Walking Tour, Discover about the sailcoth and woollen mills, meet at St. Columba’s Church Car Park, Douglas, 2pm (free, duration: two hours).
Further details from Kieran McCarthy can be got, if needs be at 0876553389.
Caption:
703a. John Rocque’s Map of Cork 1750 (source: Cork City Library)