The Atlantic Pond was one of the city’s greatest engineering projects of the nineteenth century. In 1843, Cork Corporation engineer Edward Russell was commissioned to present plans for the reclamation of 230 acres of the city’s south sloblands. The proposed aims were to create an enormous public park and to provide some building ground.
The task proposed was epic as the sloblands undulated and when the tide was in, various areas of the sloblands were covered more so than others with water. Edward Russell’s eventual published plan in December 1843 proposed the extension and widening of the dock like Navigation Wall to create a new walkway. He also proposed to manage the flow of tidal water entering the reclaimed land by installing sluice gates, sluice tunnels, and embankments and creating a giant holding pond.
The holding pond was a reservoir of six acres in size with sheeting piles driven in underneath it but above ground was presented as an ornamental pond to the general public. The pond became known as the Atlantic Pond. Comparing an 1840 Ordnance Survey map to a 1910 one shows a significant engineering project.
The pond still possesses its Victorian sluice gates and tunnels to facilitate the drainage and exclusion of water. Some of these were replaced in the 1970s and 1980s by newer gates.
The Great Famine and post economic fall-out took away the opportunity for the public park but in 1869 after twenty years of further drainage and land reclamation, business man John Arnott leased the south sloblands from Cork Corporation and it was converted into the Cork City Park Race Course. In 1917 the heart of its space was converted into the Ford Tractor Manufacturing Plant but the central road of the racecourse was retained – Centre Park Road.
The twentieth century also brought extensions to the scale of the Atlantic Pond as further land was secured west of the original pond.
Read about the Marina Park here: 8. Marina Park | Lord Mayor of Cork Cllr. Kieran McCarthy
Read Kieran’s June 2024 local election manifesto here: 2. Kieran’s Manifesto, Local Elections 2024 | Lord Mayor of Cork Cllr. Kieran McCarthy