Independent Cllr Kieran McCarthy has welcomed the roll out by Cork City Council of a number of speed display signs for the purpose of increasing awareness and encouraging drivers to reduce their speed. The presence of a speed display sign will tell drivers to adjust their speed to suit the road conditions and environment. The speed display signs are intended to be located at sites where there is a perception of speeding or a history of collisions.
Cllr McCarthy noted: “speeding is a large problem in our city and is highly dangerous in residential areas. These new signs will publicly show drivers they need to slow down. It is intended to rotate the use of the available signs across a number of sites. A number of locations were identified and assessed in consultation with An Garda Siochana and a number of bases have been installed at these locations. Signs would remain in place for sufficient time to accommodate monitoring of the impact/effectiveness and the work involved in siting and dismantling the signs”.
Speed Display Signs are currently in place erected at Boherboy Road, Boreenmanna Road, Harbour View Road and Western Road. These signs have been in place for a number of months and they will be moved in the new year to the following locations; Douglas Hall lawn, Douglas Road on approach to junction with Langford row, Togher Road, Skehard Rd and Glen Avenue. Further rotation of the signs will occur during 2018. Areas being examined for the next rotation include Wilton Corridor, Blackrock to City Corridor, Magazine Rd / Glasheen Rd and Fairhill area.
To ask the CE on progress made on drawing down government funding to replace fallen and damaged trees in the city after Storm Ophelia? (Cllr Kieran McCarthy)
The column for this year will continue to try to highlight everyday events and local history nuggets from this period of centenary commemorations. The year 1918 brought continuing challenges and opportunities to Cork and Ireland – elements such as rationing, war fatigue, renewed Sinn Féin vigour, the war ending – all offer lenses in telling the story of life in Cork one hundred years ago.
The first week of 1918 was filled with a host of entertainment options for Cork citizens at a variety of venues, all of which were described in the Cork Examiner. On New Years Eve, on 31 December 1917, the delightful musical comedy The Maid of the Mountains, by the George Edwards Company continued to attract an audience at Cork Opera House. It was the closing week of this company’s visit. George Joseph Edwardes was an English theatre manager and producer of Irish ancestry who brought a new era sin musical theatre to the British stage and beyond. Edwardes started out in theatre management and soon worked at a number of West End theatres. By the age of 20, he was managing theatres for Richard D’Oyly Carte and for the next three decades, Edwardes ruled a theatrical empire. He sent touring companies around Britain and abroad to entertain audiences with performances from Burlesque and Comic Opera to Musical comedy.
After the George Edwardes Company, the boards of Cork Opera were to be thread by The Warblers, the Cork Pierrot Concert Party. This was a variety show performed by a local company of actors and singers – they sang songs and made up their own parody songs. They performed at the Opera House for six nights and a matinee. A concert party, also called a Pierrot troupe, was the collective name for a group of entertainers, or Pierrots, popular in Britain and Ireland during the first half of the twentieth century. The variety show given by a Pierrot troupe was called a Pierrot show.
Mr Frank Pitt, manager of the Opera House, having the theatre vacant on Saturday night, 5 January 1918 offered free of cost, to the Society of St Vincent de Paul the space for a concert in aid of its funds. The concert had several singers. Selections were also given by the Butter Exchange Band, under the direction of Mr A K Ogden.
At the Palace Theatre on King Street on New Year’s Eve, another variety show took place. Amongst the more acclaimed acts was “The Great Como”, the Irish-American Illusionist. His feats had been seen before but were characterised by a “skill and smoothness”. The O’Brien Brothers as comedians and dancers entertained the crowds. The singer known as Wardini and Kathleen O’Mara represented the vocal contributors. The orchestra was under the baton of Mr R H Richards. Short films were also shown.
Further along on King Street was the Coliseum, which in 1918 had been five years in operation. On New Year’s Eve another variety show was presented. In addition to a fine picture programme, the group, The Cheeros, who were Pierrettes and Pierrots, were performing. They played to crowded houses. Mr J F Mullane was the musical director of the troupe, and the composer of the opening and finale choruses. The film side of the programme consists of a Human Sacrifice, a powerful drama in four parts. The manager, M Tighe was acknowledged in the Cork Examiner at securing a great programme.
In the city centre at the Father Mathew Hall the pupils of Mrs J F Lyons performed on the first week of January. The piece they presented was In the Days of Tara, written by Mr B McCarthy, Crosshaven. It was an interesting romantic piece and interspersed with popular Anglo-Irish songs with an elaborately well-dressed stage. On 30 January 1907, the Fr Mathew hall was opened on what was then Queen Street. There was a good auditorium for plays and concerts and plenty of rooms for activities such as a billiard room, a card room, a reading room. For a time, attempts were made to run pictures – it was called a Picturedrome. The Christmas Pantomines became popular – the cast being hall members and monies that were made defrayed expenditure. At different times, members organised dramatic societies, bands, orchestras and choral groups. Classes were held in cookery, sewing and needlework, gymnastics and first aid. Outdoor recreation comprised hurling, football and cycling.
On 4 January 1918, at Cork City Hall a treat was provided for the school children of the city. It was organised by the ladies of the Temperance League. The vestibule and entrances of the City Hall were besieged by an eager and excited throng of juveniles long before the hour arrived for the starting of the concert. Between three and four hundred were admitted but many more hundreds of children had to be refused admission. Their disappointment was somewhat relieved when they were told that the performance would be repeated in the afternoon, and those turned away would be prioritised. Greenmount Industrial School Band lent an added feature of entertainment and the magic lantern picture display, presented by Mr C Fielding was also enjoyed by the children. The other contributions included those by Fr Christy O’Flynn, the girls of the North Presentation Convent and St Marie’s of the Isle school, as well as Greenmount Dancing Class, and Mr Dan Hobbs.
Note: All the 2017 Our City, Our Town columns can be accessed on my website www.corkheritage.ie under the index to the Cork Independent column section.
Captions:
927a. Postcard of the old Cork Opera House, early twentieth century (source: Cork City Through Time by Kieran McCarthy & Dan Breen; Cork City Museum)
927b. Old Cork City Hall, c.1910 (source: Cork City Through Time by Kieran McCarthy & Dan Breen; Cork City Museum)
Missed one of Kieran McCarthy’s 50 columns of Our City, Our Town in the weekly Cork Independent in 2017 – all exploring the topical issues and challenges within Cork in 1917 – check them all out and more images at http://corkheritage.ie/?page_id=4649
Evening Echo is sited on old gasometer land gifted by Cork Gas Company to Cork City Council in the late 1980s, and subsequently dedicated as Shalom Park in 1989. The park sits in the centre of an old Cork neighbourhood known locally as ‘Jewtown.’ This neighbourhood is also home to the National Sculpture Factory. Not a specific commission, nor working to a curatorial brief, Evening Echo is a project generated as an artist’s response to the particularities of a place and has quietly gathered support from Cork Hebrew Congregation, Cork City Council, Bord Gáis and a local Cork newspaper, the Evening Echo.
References to the slow subsidence of the Jewish community in Cork have been present for years, but there is now a palpable sense of disappearance. Within the Cork Hebrew Congregation there are practical preparations underway for this, as yet unknown, future moment of cessation. Evening Echo moves through a series of thoughts and questions about what it might mean to be at this kind of cusp, both for the Jewish community and for other communities in Cork.
Evening Echo is manifested in a sequence of custom-built lamps, remote timing systems operated from Paris, a highly controlled sense of duration, a list of future dates, an annual announcement in Cork’s Evening Echo newspaper and a promissory agreement. Fleetingly activated on an annual cycle, and intended to exist in perpetuity, the project maintains a delicate position between optimism for its future existence and the possibility of its own discontinuance.
Maddie Leach’s work is largely project-based, site responsive and conceptually driven and addresses new thinking on art, sociality and place-based practices. She seeks viable ways of making artworks in order to interpret and respond to unique place-determined content and she is recognised for innovatively investigating ideas of audience spectatorship, expectation and participation in relation to art works. Leach’s projects include commissions for Iteration: Again (Tasmania, 2011), Close Encounters (Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, 2010), One Day Sculpture (2008), the New Zealand publication Speculation for the Venice Biennale 2007 and Trans Versa (The South Project, Chile, 2006).
In the early hours of Sunday morning 16 December 1917, a storm of terrific force broke over the Cork region. One hundred years ago, the newspaper coverage in the Cork Examiner reveals a damaged city much like that from Storm Ophelia several weeks ago. In our time the coverage gives insights into the smaller important geographical features of the city a century ago, which sometime remain hidden in the record of local history through being taken for granted.
The storm came first from NNW and then varying from points north and north-east the wind blew, rapidly passed the half-gale stage, and reached hurricane strength. The weather report records that it was intensely cold. With the advent of the storm numerous houses, out offices and other buildings suffered damage with roofs being stripped of slates and tiles, and sheds being, in many cases removed of firmly-fastened corrugated iron coverings. During the morning and well into the day falling slates in nearly all parts of the city were a source of considerable danger, and according to the press, rarely before had slates been torn up in such a manner. The amount of damage issued by the breaking of glass was also significant. It affected the narrow streets more than the large thoroughfares – many valuable, pieces of plate glass were broken by falling debris during the day.
In the wooded districts on the outskirts of the city many trees were uprooted and felled while the havoc to which telegraphic and telephone connections were made to were severe. Boats in the river and harbour tied up to moorings broke away in several instances, while others were swamped and submerged. Night watches on ships at anchor and alongside wharves were kept on the alert through the night and morning. The tides too were at their highest in the month and lashed rough and breaking water. This rendered difficult and dangerous the task of securing tenders and boating at the quayside and on the river. Comparatively little rain fell during the early evening of day. Towards the evening the wind moderated just a little but came on again with renewed drive as the dark set in.
Some extraordinary escapes from injury were recorded by falling masonry and flying slates. In Douglas Street a little girl turning a corner was suddenly struck by the full force of the gale and driven backward into the footpath. This probably saved her life. For at the same instant a heavy roof slate smashed itself into fragments falling right where the child had been. After holding on through the night against the fierce onslaught of the elements the flagstaff on the tramway standard in front of the Recruiting Office in St Patrick’s Street, from which the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack had been flying, was smashed a little after noon. The flags fell to the ground.
Wooden hoardings in the different parts of the city suffered much damage. Those on the Western Road at the entrance to the Cork Muskerry Railway terminus were almost destroyed. Near the Cork, Blackrock and Passage Station at Albert Street, hoardings were also partially blown down by the wind. In the Cork Athletic Grounds the damage done to similar constructions was extensive. Here also breaches were made in several parts of the enclosure, particularly on the east side. Hurling matches arranged to be played at these grounds had to be abandoned. The ground of the Greenmount National School suffered to some extent, the railing boards of the western side being stripped from their iron supports.
The glass roof of the Electric Power House and Tram Car Shed on Albert Road was smashed in many places, but the city tram services were not disrupted. In the roofs of houses in the south side of the city large holes, some many square feet in size, were caused by the forcible removal of slates by the gale.
Gas lamps in many city streets were extinguished, rendering pedestrianism in places difficult and dangerous. In the vicinity of St Luke’s Cross, some of the residents had a narrow escape from what might have been serious accidents owing to the collapse of the upper portion of a lamp post, which fell across the roadway.
The absence of hackney cars on the streets, especially covered vehicles, was also noticeable. Drivers had reason and experience early in the day for taking this step – there being imminent danger of accidents in the more exposed hazards of the city’s open spaces and wind tunnelled street areas.
During the day upward of a dozen persons were treated at the city infirmaries for injuries caused by slates, masonry, glass and some falls. They were nearly all however, of a minor nature and did not require people staying overnight at infirmaries. Ten were scalp wounds, and cuts on arms and faces but there were two cases of fractured arms. An abatement in the force of the wind set in the hours that followed.
Happy Christmas and Happy New Year to all readers of the column – if you missed one of the columns this year, check out the Our City, Our Town column at my website, www.corkheritage.ie. Secret Cork, which is my 2017 book, and published by Amberley Press, is now in Cork bookshops as well as a selection of previous books.
Captions:
926a. Tram leaving Douglas Village, c.1900 (source: Tram Tracks Through Cork by Walter McGrath)
926b. Tram outside Electric Power House and Tram Car Shed on Albert Road, c.1900 (source: Tram Tracks Through Cork by Walter McGrath)
