Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,
Cork Independent, 22 August 2013
The Spike Island Experience
Recently I visited Spike Island on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the handover of the island by the British government to the Irish government. To showcase the island’s heritage, Cork County Council have designed a brochure to give a flavour of the island’s rich and colourful heritage. It focuses on a number of themes, reflecting different aspects of Spike and its uses over a millennium and a half. Spike Island has hosted a monastery, a fortress and a prison within its 104 acres, all of which have left their mark, if not always physically, at least culturally on it public perception.
There is some evidence that a monastery was founded on Spike Island (Inis Pic) in the 7th Century. The well known Saint, St Mochuda or St Carthage, is said to have founded a monastery here in 635AD. Fast forward to the 1770s, during the turmoil of the American War of Independence, Cork harbour replaced Kinsale as the principal royal navy base on the south coast. To strengthen the defences of the harbour a decision was taken to build a fort on Spike Island, it was named Fort Westmoreland and was completed by 26 July 1779. In time, the British military quickly realised the strategic importance of Spike and decided to replace the old fort with a much larger structure. General Charles Vallancey and architect Michael Shanahan were responsible for the new fort and the foundation stone was laid on 6 June 1804. It consisted of six bastions connected by ramparts and surrounded by a dry moat and outer artificial slopes.
The fort also holds the cell of John Mitchel (1815-1875), who was an Irish nationalist activist, solicitor and political journalist. Born near Dungiven, Co Derry, he became a leading member of both Young Ireland and the Irish confederation. He was an outspoken critic of British rule and in 1843, he was convicted of sedition and sentenced to transportation to Bermuda for fourteen years. On 27 May 1848, Mitchel was sent from Dublin on board HMS Scourge to Spike Island where he was incarcerated for three days. On Spike Island, Mitchel met Edward Walsh (1805-1849), the noted poet and schoolmaster of the prison on the island. From Bermuda, Mitchel was sent to the penal colony of Van Diemen’s Land – now Tasmania. It was during this journey he wrote his famous “Jail Journal”. Mitchel escaped from the colony in 1853 and settled in America. He returned to Ireland and was elected to the British House of Commons, only to be disqualified because he was a convicted felon. He died on 20 March 1875 in Newry. The Fort on Spike Island was renamed Fort Mitchel in his honour in 1961.
By 1883 a reduction in the overall number of prisoners led to the closure of the prison and it once again became a purely military complex. However, the island’s days as a prison were not over. In 1916, the captured crew of The Aud, a ship carrying a cargo of arms for Ireland to aid the Easter Rising, was held on the island prior to being transferred to a POW camp in England. During the War of Independence, Spike was used as a prison and internment centre for members of the Irish Volunteers. Up to 500 prisoners were housed in Blocks and in wooden huts. There were two daring escapes during this period including that of three IRA prisoners on 29 April, 1931. The three men, Sean MacSwiney (brother of Terence), Tom Malone and Con Twomey were rescued by motor launch by members of the IRA based in Cobh. From 1972 until 1982 it was used as a military detention centre.
The transfer of Spike to the Irish government took place on 11 July 1938. By 1980, the first Naval Service recruits came to the island in 1980 and in the next five years up to four classes a year were enlisted. In 1985, the government decided to convert the fort into a prison and the order was given for the naval garrison to stand down.
In July 2010, a new phase in Spike Island’s history began as the State, specifically the Department of Justice and Law Reform, officially handed control over to Cork County Council, thus ending over two centuries of institutional use. Cork County Council entered into a contract with experienced tour operators to conduct walking tours of the island, accessed from Cobh by a license ferry operator. Cork County Council recognises that there is a pent-up demand from people to visit Spike, including people who formerly lived on the island. The County Council is also preparing medium to long-term plans for the development of the island as a tourist attraction including the integration of new uses into buildings both within and outside the star-shaped fort. It is hope that the development of Spike Island as a visitor attraction will help build on the existing tourism and heritage infrastructure in Cork harbour, especially the Queenstown Story experience at the Cobh Heritage Centre and the County Council and Community led Camden Fort Meagher experience. See http://www.spikeislandcork.ie/ for more information.
Caption:
705a. Southern battery of Spike Island, 10 July 2013, an event to mark the 75th anniversary of the handing over of Spike Island by the British to the Irish government in July 1938 (picture: Kieran McCarthy).