Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 26 November, Kieran’s New Book, Ring of Kerry Postcard Collection

820a. Front cover of Ring of Kerry, The Postcard Collection by Kieran McCarthy

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 26 November 2015

 

Kieran’s New Book – Ring of Kerry Postcard Collection

 

    The third of three books I have been compiling and penning this year is entitled Ring of Kerry, The Postcard Collection. Vibrancy, a wild vibrancy, is perhaps the best way to describe the Ring of Kerry. Exposed by raw elements, the landscape is windswept and awe inspiring. This book follows on from my previous work of exploring the nature of postcards in the south west region and how they helped to placemake and construct local, regional and national identity. The book explores the fascination of landscapes around the Ring of Kerry or the Grand Atlantic Tour as it was known a century ago and comprises what could be genuinely described as stunning images. Many could be printed in large sizes and hung on walls and I have no doubt many have over the decades. They are beautiful images made to entice the viewer to remember, to visit and not forget.

    These postcards were the preferred souvenirs for connoisseurs of the landscape. They framed a world for people to view, consume, keep a part of, send to other people and mass produce. The mass production of such images helped advance the narrative in promoting the south west Iveragh peninsula. The communication of the message behind these postcards in the early twentieth century was important and the messages were and still are numerous and strong. They showcase extraordinary and geologically ancient but desperate spaces in an artistic narrative our countryside, a sense of adventure, ideas of self-discovery, true, honest and valuable experiences, the 40shadesofgreen package, concepts of Irish culture and identity, and ultimately the collective memory of a country and what it stands for.

    The postcards contain representations of an Ireland to draw people to the country and into the country’s regions. The images are collective representations and visual metaphors of the power of landscape in the culture of the time they were produced – they all spin a political narrative of sorts on the selection of memories, stories, legends and their meanings, the role of natural and built landscape in shaping the Irish psyche – what should be remembered more so than forgotten, what images are deemed important in the construction of local and national belonging in the early twentieth century. The postcards are all romantic and poetic odes to landscape – by photographers and artists – their awe and respect can be viewed as well as their devotion to nature and the quest for a vision of the idyllic.

   Many of the images within this book are also of familiar landscapes, landscapes that many Irish people learned about in school or on holidays (like my own situation!) whilst bottled up in a car travelling from one set piece to another. They are Ireland’s public and private playgrounds of sorts – places to get lost in – to feel dwarfed by the mountains, the lakes and the coastline. The images are exaggerated with the addition of reflections and shadows and oil painting type colours – colours that heighten and aid in the construction of place. Even a single image can make a huge impression. Memorials and ruins are shown with ivy and crumbling stone – to show the contribution of nostalgia, how it creeps into a sense of place to ignite a present and to question a future.

    Accumulating a large cross section of these early twentieth century images together provides a wider snap shot of perspectives and perceptions of landscape, the stories within the landscape and Irish identity, and how they interweave. The postcards are framed narratives – perceived as symbolising Irish landscapes, identity within those landscapes, that the peaks, troughs, rivers, lakes, cottages symbolise an idyll. The Ring of Kerry is all about travel. There are tourist reports of visits to Killarney since the late eighteenth century, accounts of Grand Tours of Kerry in the nineteenth century, and narratives about Irish Free State tourism products in the county in the twentieth century. All reflect a pilgrimage of the self – of silent conversations with yourself and nature and your place in the world chasing reflections of the world in south Kerry’s crystalline lakes or bending to the might of the landscape on its coastal roads, seeking the Atlantic view point.

   Now scattered to the four corners of the virtual eBay world and institutions like Kerry County Libraries and postcard fairs and shops, these postcards in their day influenced the modern photographic and text based narrative in marketing the Ring of Kerry today. Of course not every place was photographed and the editing of this book has also been difficult in choosing which postcards to include. The book is divided into four sections, Kenmare and its surroundings, Killarney and its tourism heart, the lake district, and a spin around the c.180km Ring of Kerry. Scattered across the publication as well, I have put in my own artistic responses to the landscape in the form of poems. The postcards and landscapes opened up further creativity in my own writing and new ways to research, decode and describe the Irish countryside. The postcards offer much to the student of cultural landscapes and how our heritage is constructed and ultimately how it can be appreciated, understood, interpreted, reinterpreted, negotiated, protected and advanced – and above all cherished.

Ring of Kerry, The Postcard Collection by Kieran McCarthy is published by Amberley Press and is available in all good bookshops.

Captions:

820a. Front cover of Ring of Kerry, The Postcard Collection by Kieran McCarthy

820b. Postcard of the Gap of Dunloe, c.1900

820b. Postcard of the Gap of Dunloe, c.1900

Cork City Council Budget meeting, 16 November 2015

 

Cork City Council Budget meeting, 16 November 2015

Comments by Cllr Kieran McCarthy

Introduction:

  Can I compliment the CE on producing a balanced budget for next year. It is a very difficult task to achieve what you and your team have compiled and proposed here.

   I have no doubt there was alot of questioning and debating the way forward. It seems like you have had quite a baptism of fire in the various ways this Council moves forward – development plan, boundary extension, funding issues – they are all about vast changes of mindset in terms of delivering local government for Cork.

  CE, you speak about a “considered and reasonable balance” between the desirability of maintaining services and our ability to fund them, yes I agree there has been consideration and balance on your behalf – on the behalf of the city and the people we represent, the budget papers over huge cracks in the future but not by your hand. Your hand has revealed the vast number of difficulties in getting funding in place for the raft of Council services.

   It seems like the Council is just hanging in there, if the Council was a tree, it is bent over in the wind. It is strong but needs supports to stabilise it. Its tree has been stripped bare by the economic storm that swept through here. The fruits of our revenue reserve are almost exhausted. The branches of our property tax don’t extend far enough to create a strong tree capable of bearing anywhere near how the Council used to be funded by government.

   We seem to be caught in the same season for four years – a barren place where the City will need further financial help as the years go on – we are dependent on the rates of the 6,500 rate payers, development charges and so on. Everyone the Council engages with is calling out for help to move development and I think in fairness you and your team have accommodating the listening process as least to people’s concerns.

 

Different perspectives and listening:

  I agree with your perspectives about not increasing the rates base and to sustain it at its current levels. Business activity has returned to the city but only just.

  I think the ring fencing of the one per cent of the rates fund for economic development has brought increase entrepreneurial activity in the city. I think it is incumbent on us a city to maximize as much as possible levels of enterprise – that we are a city of start-ups and indigenous industry – I see our local enterprise office provided training to 190 owners/ managers in areas such as Finance, Cloud computing, and start your own business. Despite our great local enterprise office and their work, stronger signals need to be sent out highlighting the significant role of enterprise and SME’s in our city.

  On the matter of car-parking, I note the drop in income. It is incumbent on us to market the two car-parks, Paul Street and Kyrl’s Quay. I think both need decent marketing plans to get more people to use them – perhaps use this time of loss to incentivise their use – I think the city centre strategy needs to move now to get more people into the city centre

   I note as well the need to retain our investment into the Council’s vibrant Arts, Cultural and Festivals. This city earns millions of euros in the roll-out of the 24 festivals – our bars, restaurants, shops and hotels all benefit – and we need to keep investing in our tourism projects like Elizabeth Fort and keep pushing the National Diaspora project, which is a must for the city.

   The ring-fencing of money for community projects is also great – so much good work goes on in our communities – and the Council direct sometimes we take for granted how much money is invested in making sure a men’s club is looked after, or a community association or a sports club – and all look not for big money generally but small monies to keep their operation in order.

  These latter aspects and more are all positive items, which the Council must continue to invest in. There are alot of very positive threads in building and bridging communities in this budget document.

  I don’t welcome the ongoing financial problems and emailing the people I represent noting I can’t help you in terms of social housing or roads or footpath maintenance. However, going forward, the city keeps evolving and further financial means will have to be secured.

Thanks Lord Mayor.

Ends.

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 19 November 2015

819a. Richard Boyle’s tomb, St Mary’s Church, Youghal

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 19 November 2015 

Cork Harbour Memories (Part 38) 

A Defender of Church and Town

 

   The vast estates of the Fitzgeralds, the Earl of Desmond dynasty (see last week), were confiscated in the reign of Elizabeth I, and granted to various English settlers (called planters or undertakers). The names of the new settlers in Ireland who obtained grants of the Desmond estates in Cork and Waterford, were Sir Walter Raleigh, Arthur Robins, Fane Beecher, Hugh Worth, Arthur Hyde, Sir Warham St. Leger, Hugh Cuffe, Sir Thomas Norris, Sir Arthur Hyde, Thomas Say, Sir Richard Beacon and (the poet) Edmond Spencer.

   Walter Raleigh (c.1554-1618) had taken part in the suppression of the Desmond rebellion in 1579 and profited from the subsequent distribution of land. He received 40,000 acres or 162 km2 which included the important towns of Youghal and Lismore. This allowed him to become one of the principal landowners in Munster, but nevertheless had only some degree of success in convincing English tenants to settle on his estates. Youghal was the home of Sir Walter Raleigh for brief periods during the seventeen years in which he held land in Ireland. The decade of the 1590s coincided with difficulties on Raleigh’s Irish plantations at a time when his own fortunes were in decline. He sold his Irish estates in 1602 to Richard Boyle, thus ending his involvement with the plantation of Munster.

   Richard Boyle (1566-1643) is closely associated with the history of Youghal, purchasing the town as part of his acquisition of the Munster estate of Sir Walter Raleigh. On the rich array of heritage information panels in Youghal, the story of Richard Boyle’s influence is related. Boyle occupied the office of Sheriff from 1625 to 1626. He had a substantial residence, known today as The College, close to St. Mary’s Collegiate Church. Boyle recognised the suitability of Youghal area for the production of pig iron, for which there was great demand in England. A plentiful supply of timber for charcoal, rich iron ore deposits, water power and a great port area all combined to generate an active iron industry in the early seventeenth century. The yew woods from which Youghal derived its name (Irish: Eochaill) were used to supply the ironworks of Richard Boyle.

   Amongst the other legacies of Boyle’s influence in Youghal are the Almshouses, which he endowed to house six old soldiers, who were to receive a pension of £5 per annum. This service was later broadened to include widows. The six houses were constructed in 1610 and continued in use in their original form until the mid-nineteenth century, when some alterations took place. They are now owned by Youghal Urban District Council and still serve a similar generous purpose.

  In 1606 Richard Boyle paid for the south transept of St Mary’s Church to be rebuilt, as a mortuary chapel for his family. Boyle’s journals record that the south-transept was the place ‘wherein the townsmen in time of rebellion kept their cows’. In subsequent years he spent thousands of pounds on the restoration of the church, including rebuilding the chancel. Historian Dr Clodagh Tait in an article in the Royal Irish Academy has an article entitled Colonising memory: manipulations of death, burial and commemoration in the career of Richard Boyle, first earl of Cork. Dr Tait describes the Earl of Cork’s “energetic tomb-building”, which cost him well over £1000, was a means of demonstrating that “he had arrived, and had created a fortune and a dynasty”. Boyle symbolically presented himself as the “spiritual successor of Youghal’s ancient inhabitants”, and as the “defender of the town and its church”. Viewing the relaxed sculpture on his tomb of a smiling Boyle lying on his side with his family around him shows how he did manipulate the meanings around how he was to be commemorated in history.

 Architect Alexander Hillis of London erected Boyle’s tomb in the south transept in 1620. The monument, heavily influenced by renaissance architecture, was the height of fashion when it was built. The work is still surrounded by its original protective wrought-iron railings displaying further pieces of family heraldry. The swords shown at the bottom are a symbol of Boyle’s power, justice and the armour of God. It shows Boyle himself reclining, with his first and second wives, Joan Apsley and Katherine Fenton respectively, to either side, his mother Joan Naylor over, and a few of 16 children, kneeling in a row in front of him. His first wife died in childbirth and she is represented with a baby at her feet. The skulls portray someone already dead at the time the monument was carved.

  Boyle himself died in 1643 and was buried here in his monument with his mother – but not his wives. Incidentally, a further elaborate monument by Boyle can be found in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. It was erected to Katherine Fenton, his second wife (died 1630) and finished in 1632. Boyle’s second wife Catherine Fenton bore him fifteen children before she expired at the age of 42. Of the eight daughters, seven were married to noblemen. Of the seven sons, four were ennobled in the lifetime of their father. The most notable of this extensive offspring was Robert Boyle, the natural philosopher and author or Boyle’s Law.

To be continued…

 

Captions:

819a. Richard Boyle’s tomb, St Mary’s Church, Youghal (pictures: Kieran McCarthy)

819b. Detail of Richard’s face, Richard Boyle’s tomb, St Mary’s Church, Youghal

819c. Richard’s children in sculpture, Richard Boyle’s tomb, St Mary’s Church, Youghal

819b. Detail of Richard’s face, Richard Boyle’s tomb, St Mary’s Church, Youghal

819c. Richard’s children in sculpture, Richard Boyle’s tomb, St Mary’s Church, Youghal

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 12 November 2015

818a. Ruins of Richard Boyle’s early seventeenth century manor house at Castlemartyr Resort

 

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 12 November 2015 

Cork Harbour Memories (Part 37)

The Gems of the Fitzgeralds

 

      East Cork of the early 1600s possessed a number of old Fitzgerald family castles, which passed to Richard Boyle (1566-1643). John Speed’s map of c.1610, part of his collection of maps of Britain and Ireland from The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine (1611-12), showcases these structures within named territories of Irish and English lords. Three more sites are generally detailed below (continued from last week), whose ruins have survived into the modern day Irish landscape.

   Ballymartyr Castle is marked on Speed’s map, which survives as a key attraction on the Castlemartyr Resort estate. The ruins of the impressive Boyle manor house, its exterior walls, chimneys, its bawn or enclosure wall, a mural tower, and a fortified house survive as well the five-storey tower house. The tower is quite possibly an earlier structure. The historical records for the site detail a chequered history but certainly there is a sense that there is much to still much to discover and interpret about its role in the formation of the layered histories of East Cork. It is known that the first castle was first built in 1210 by the Knights Templar under the leadership of Richard Earl de Clare, also known as Strongbow. By the mid fifteenth century, the castle was the seat for the local seneschal or steward of the regional Lord appointed by James, Earl of Ormond. Ballymartyr Castle was captured in 1569 by Elizabeth’s Lord Deputy of Ireland Sir Henry Sidney, when Ormond’s men abandoned the castle overnight after a cannon attack. Sidney had initially proposed the appointment of a military governor (Lord President) in the provinces of Munster and Connacht. This incited the first of the Desmond Rebellions led by James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald of the Geraldine family. Ballymartyr was subsequently given to Sir Walter Raleigh, and later managed by local Elizabethan steward John FitzGerald. The Earl of Ormond attacked the castle in 1579. John FitzGerald was eventually captured in 1583 and died a few years later in Dublin Castle in 1589.

    During the early seventeenth century, Richard Boyle, the first Earl of Cork, built a magnificent Manor House, whose exterior walled ruins are impressive to explore and circumnavigate. It is only when you stand by its walls that you appreciate how significant this court-like-castle would have been in the East Cork countryside showcasing a marker of a change in leadership and architecture in early seventeenth century Irish society. In the 1640s, the citizens of the castle again witnessed conflict and changed hands twice more before being set on fire to prevent it being used as a base for the Irish Confederate forces. During the civil war, the castle was captured by the Irish, and then recaptured by the Williamites in 1690, but was badly damaged and eventually abandoned and fell into disrepair. It was Henry Boyle (1682-1764), 1st Earl of Shannon and ancestor of Richard Boyle, who built the eastern portion of the present mansion house or hotel and who set about beautifying the estate between the years 1733 and 1764.

   Located c. 3 miles west of Castlemartyr village in the parish of Ballyoughtera and the barony of Imokilly is Ballintotis Castle. Its proposed restoration in 2008 led to a request for an impact assessment to be prepared and a log in the great archaeology website, www,excavations.ie. It is a small square tower-house that was built as an outer defence for the Castlemartyr estate in the sixteenth century. The castle and lands were granted to George Moore in 1579 in gratitude for his contribution to the wars in Scotland and Ireland. The castle is included in the Down Survey of 1655 and the lands of ‘Killurgane and Ballytotis’ are listed as being the property of Edmund Fitzgerald at this time. The castle survives today as a small, standard four-storey tower-house.

  Ballintotis Castle today is entered at ground-floor level by an arched door near the north end of the west wall. Part of a high rubble limestone wall survives to the west of the tower, which is interpreted as part of the original bawn wall or part of a former building which abutted the castle. The initial phase of monitoring for restoration focused on the removal of topsoil for a new driveway leading from the castle to the public road. All works associated with the insertion of services and the removal of waste from the tower-house were also monitored. Margaret McCarthy, the author of the detail on excavations.ie, details that during restoration no features of archaeological significance were identified on the surface and the finds consisted of three fragments of post-medieval ware.

   Inchiquin castle of the Fitzgeralds is also marked on Speed’s map. It is one of the few round structured castles in County Cork. The walls are from 8-12 feet thick. In 1322 a document mentions it as a round tower built of stone. It was the property of the Fitzgeralds and was a dower house for widows of the Desmond family. According to legend, the Old Countess of Desmond lived here for 70 years and died in 1604 tradition says aged 140 (!). So myth from this time has also survived in the local folklore of the area which intertwines with the landscape. Walter Raleigh later owned this property in time and sold it to Richard Boyle.

To be continued…

 

Captions:

818a. Ruins of Richard Boyle’s early seventeenth century manor house at Castlemartyr Resort (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

818b. Section of East Cork from John Speed’s Province of Munster, from his The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine, c.1610-11 (source: Cork City Library)

818b. Section of East Cork from John Speed’s Province of Munster, from his The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine, c.1610-11

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 5 November 2015

817a. Eastern section of Cork harbour from John Speed’s Province of Munster

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 5 November 2015

 Cork Harbour Memories (Part 36)

 Old Territories in East Cork

 

   I am a big fan of the open road east of Carrigtwohill to Youghal – the gorgeous lake of Loughaderra, the opportunity to get lost on the roads to Ballymaloe, Ballycotton or Roches Point and the accompanying rolling landscape along the scenic coast, and the chance to stop in the quaint and colourful villages of Aghada or Cloyne.

  John Speed’s map of c.1610, part his collection of maps of Britain and Ireland from The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine (1611-12), showcases clusters of settlements to the east of Cork harbour extending into West Waterford. All in time were influenced by the age of Richard Boyle (1566-1643), the first Earl of Cork and his clustering of people, industrial manufacture and new cultural practices – all of which were ‘planted’ or sown as such into the East Cork and West Waterford landscape. Boyle inherited a highly politicised landscape, which just a few years previously new plantation structures emerged across – old ways, old stories, old politics was dismantled and attempted to be disentangled, and new ways of integration and colonisation were born.This is a landscape which just a few years previously had seen its landowner beheaded – Gerald Fitzgerald – and its successor Walter Raleigh go bankrupt.

  Speed’s map of East Cork illustrates the former lands and key settlements of the Fitzgeralds who were earls of Desmond and who were one of the most powerful families in Munster. Several of them were lords deputies of Ireland in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Gerald Fitzgerald, sixteenth earl of Desmond, resisted the Reformation in the reign of Elizabeth, and waged war against the English government. The Earl of Desmond’s forces after long contests were defeated, and he himself was slain in a glen near Castle Island, in county Kerry, on 11 November, 1583. His head was cut off and sent to England, by Thomas Butler, Earl of Ormond, as a present to Queen Elizabeth, who fixed it upon London Bridge.

  On Speed’s map a number of sites are shown associated with members of the Fitzgerald family who had retained their lands due to tenancy deals struck with the monarchy and local lords such as Boyle. Corkbeg island plantation is shown. In time these lands passed down through the Fitzgerald family and Corkbeg House, the elegant residence of R. U. Penrose Fitzgerald, was created. The lawn and shrubbery were connected by a narrow slip with the main land, where the remainder of the demesne, comprising 350 acres of some of the best cultivated land in the barony was situated. The island and demense was built over by Whitegate Oil refinery in the late 1950s.

   The name FitzEdmund near Cloyne is marked or that of John FitzEdmond FitzGerald. He was an MP for Cork County in 1585. He was son of Sir Edmond Fitzgerald, knight, of Cloyne, who was descended from the Knights of Kerry. He lived at Ballymaloe in a tower house; part of the fifteenth century structure still stands. He was sheriff of the county in 1570. On 16 May, 1582, he had a pension of 100 marks per annum granted to him. For his allegiance and his neutrality during the plantations wars with other cousins of the Fitzgerald clan, and neutrality within the Battle of Kinsale he was knighted 11 March, 1601-2, by Lord Mountjoy, the lord deputy, “whom he entertained at his castle at Cloyne. He died at Cloyne on 15 January, 1612, aged 85. A stone commemorating the event and bearing the Fitzgerald coat of arms is set into the back wall of the present house at Ballymaloe.

  As for Cloyne it is marked as Cloney. The Diocese of Cloyne has its beginnings in the monastic settlement of St Colman at Cloyne in East Cork. A round tower and pre-reformation Cathedral still stand at this site. Cloyne was later to become the centre of an extensive diocese in Munster. For eight centuries it was the residence of the Bishops of Cloyne and the setting for the Cathedral.

  A settlement called Tranakan is marked on the map, where now Trabolgan is situated. I have not managed to find information on Tranakan. However around 1640-1650 AD, the Roche family purchased this part of the Fitzgerald estate from Edmund Fitzgerald of Ballymaloe and lived for many centuries at Trabolgan.

  To the north of the eastern harbour area, the town of Midleton had not been created yet (it was incorporated by charter in 1670). In the 1180s the Anglo Normans led by the family Barry Fitzgerald founded an abbey at a weir on the nearby river to be settled by Cistercian Monks. The abbey became known as “Chore Abbey” and “Castrum Chor”, taking its name from the Irish word cora (weir). The abbey is remembered in the Irish name for Midleton, Mainistir na Corann and in the Owenacurra or Abhainn na Cora meaning River of the Weirs. The name Coragh Flu is marked on Speed’s map. To the east of this denotation, the site of Castle Redmond built by Redmond Fitzgerald or FitzEdmund in the reign of Henry VIII is denoted. Coppingerstown Castle, another Fitzgerald castle, is also shown (survives in ruins). The lands were formerly that of the Coppinger family who were originally of Danish stock and who for many generations were important in the Danish sector of Cork and County.

To be continued…

 Captions:

817a. Eastern section of Cork harbour from John Speed’s Province of Munster, from his The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine, c.1610-11 (source: Cork City Library)

817b. St Colman’s Cathedral, Cloyne, Round Tower and graveyard, formerly the centre of an extensive diocese in Munster, present day (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

817b. St Colman’s Cathedral, Cloyne, Round Tower and graveyard

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 29 October 2015

816a.  Main Street Bandon, c.1900

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article, 

Cork Independent, 29 October 2015 

Cork Harbour Memories (Part 35)

 

Boyle’s West Cork Towns

 

   Last week I mentioned Richard Boyle (1566-1643), the first Earl of Cork, and his interest in creating industrial complexes such as ironworks and associated plantation settlements. His main estates were in counties Cork and Waterford but he also owned significant property in county Kerry, including lands in the baronies of Corkaguiny and Dunkerron South. In the early seventeenth century maps of Munster, some of the key settlements which Boyle was involved in creating appear. In time, many of these developed into well loved and beautiful County Cork towns – for example Bandon and Clonakilty – both of which underpin West Cork’s regional heritage and identity.

   Professor Pat O’Flanagan’s Historic Town Atlas of Bandon relates that Boyle had an involvement in Bandon, in perhaps what could be described as its second phase of development. Bandon derives its name from the erection of a bridge over the river Bandon, and owes its origin to the English planters on the great Desmond forfeitures in the reign of Elizabeth. In 1609, James I granted to Henry Beecher the privilege of a Saturday market and two fairs at the town. Power was given to him and his heirs to appoint a clerk of the market in the newly erected town of Bandon-Bridge, or in any other town within the territory, with the privilege of licensing all tradesmen and artisans settling in them.

   The grants were shortly afterwards purchased by Richard Boyle the first Earl of Cork, whose efforts in promoting the town’s growth and prosperity led him to rewrite history as such and to be regarded as the founder of the town. He peopled it with a colony of Protestant merchants from Bristol and established iron-smelting and linen-weaving industries, all of which in a few short years flourished and increased in extent and importance. The manufacture of camlets, stuffs, and other woollen goods prevailed in Bandon to the close of the close of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century, and was succeeded by the spinning and weaving of cotton, which continued to flourish till 1825. Spinning-mills were then erected on a large scale, and more than 1000 people were employed in weaving, Both branches of industry diminished, in so much as the mills became less busy and not more than 100 weavers were employed as the mid nineteenth century progressed.

  In the early seventeenth century, Bandon was under continuous attack by dispossessed Irish native families such as the O’Mahony’s. Subsequently, in 1620 Richard Boyle began the construction of a wall around the town. The wall took approximately five years to build and enclosed an area of 27 acres. Much of the walls were nine feet thick and varied in height from thirty to fifty feet. There were six round towers with additional defences provided by cannon. The river openings were protected by iron flood gates and fences. The gates were built within an archway capable of allowing the tallest cart-load to pass through. They were imposing portals and strengthened with portcullises. The bridge was built of stone and consisted of six arches. Within the walls Boyle built 250 houses. There were also three urban tower houses.

  Nearby the town of Clonakilty was formally founded in 1613 by Richard Boyle when he received a charter from King James I. It appears to have replaced the nearby medieval settlement of Kilgarriff as the focus for urban development. Boyle was constituted lord of the town, with power to appoint several of the officers and to a certain extent to superintend the affairs of the corporation, which was to consist of a sovereign and not less than 13 nor more than 24 burgesses. The sovereign was annually elected by the lord of the town out of three burgesses chosen by the corporation, and the recorder was also appointed by him. The charter conferred the right of sending two members to the Irish parliament, which it continued to exercise till the Act of Union. He settled 100 English families here. Established as a market town it was engaged chiefly in the manufacture of linen and cotton through its elaborate mills. Breweries were developed in the eighteenth century and corn and potatoes were exported to Cork. The present town was largely laid out in the period 1788-1840.

   Samuel Lewis in his Topographical Dictionary of Ireland describes Boyle’s legacy of sorts in Clonakilty in 1837; “The staple trade of the town was linen manufacture, which furnished employment to 400 looms and 1000 persons, who manufactured to the amount of £250 or £300 weekly. The cotton-manufacture also employed about 40 looms. A spacious linen-hall had been built some years previous by the Earl of Shannon…The corn trade was carried on chiefly by agents for the Cork merchants, who shipped it there and received coal as a return cargo”. In 1837, Lewis described that there were 14 lighters or boats of “17 tons burden each” regularly employed in raising and conveying sand to be used in the neighbourhood as manure. The nearby harbour was only fit for use for small vessels, the channel was extremely narrow and dangerous, and had at its entrance a sand bar, over which vessels above 100 tons could only pass at high spring tides. Large vessels, therefore, discharged their cargoes at the warehouses at Ring, about a mile below the town, the ruins of which still can be seen today.

 To be continued…

 

Captions:

816a. Main Street, Bandon, c.1900 (source: West Cork Through Time by Kieran McCarthy & Dan Breen, Cork City Museum).

816b. Boyle’s legacy, Mill Street, Clonakility, c.1900 (source: West Cork Through Time by Kieran McCarthy & Dan Breen, Cork City Museum).

816b. Boyle's legacy, Mill Street Clonakility, c.1900

 

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 22 October 2015

815a. Proposed portrait of Richard Boyle, early 1600s

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 22 October 2015

 Cork Harbour Memories (Part 34)

 Wood, Iron and a Seventeenth Century Millionaire

 

   In the first two decades of the 1600s, the Munster plantation was re-established and re-constituted by the Governor of Munster, George Carew. The plantation was successful in its endeavours to bring more planters to Ireland. By 1611, five thousand planters were recorded in Munster which rose to twenty-two thousand by 1641. On the one hand, with this colonisation came an influx of skilled craft-workers which led to an increase in the country’s productivity. However, on the other hand, the colonisation led very quickly to large scale Anglicisation, which attempted to destabilise Irish society by introducing new English ways of laws and social traditions.

   Joe Nunan of Blackwater Archaeology in his research work details the economy of the Munster plantation and how it grew grew steadily. The extraction of timber and iron yielded large profits but the plantation areas also rapidly developed a strong export trade in cattle and sheep. Ironworking was successful in Munster (and elsewhere) as there appears to have been significant amounts of woodland (for fuel). In the timber trade large numbers of New English settlers within the region were involved in large scale woodland clearance. Hardwoods of the Blackwater, the Lee and the Bandon River Valleys satisfied the English demand for ship timbers, barrel staves and charcoal. Boyle and Jephsons of Mallow were known as two key families of several who were involved in the export of timber. A Philip Cottingham was sent over by the crown in 1608 to survey Munster’s woods and in particular inspected the work of entrepreneur Richard Boyle. The survey detailed that much of the best timber had already been used up for pipe and barrel-staves. By 1620 Spain and France were importing many of their staves from Ireland. Walter Raleigh, in partnership with Henry Pyne, also forged a key role in their production and export from woodlands on the Cork and Waterford boundary, which were located along the Bride River.

    With reference to iron production, in Munster between 1607 and 1630, there was also a rapid growth in iron production. High international prices contributed to the construction of iron manufacturing in counties Cork and Waterford, which were situated near the Bandon, the Lee and the Blackwater Rivers. Timber, charcoal and labour were less costly than in England. Richard Boyle was involved in the ownership, establishment and leasing of many ironworks along the lower Blackwater and the Bride Rivers, while the East India Company established ironworks on the banks of the Bandon River.

   Recently I attended a historical walking tour of Youghal organised by the Irish Post Medieval and Archaeology Group and led by Cork author, industrial archaeologist and eminent scholar Dr Colin Rynne of UCC who is completing an Irish Research Council project (With Dr David Edwards, History UCC) entitled “the colonial landscapes of Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork, c. 1602-1643”. The project, which delves into the extensive archives of Boyle’s estate, details that he was viewed by his contemporaries as a model English planter, who best realised the aims of the Munster Plantation, forging a model English Protestant ‘commonwealth’ on his estates. In his lifetime Boyle was to become the wealthiest subject of King Charles I.

   Richard Boyle was an entrepreneur from Canterbury who became one of the most powerful characters in Britain and Ireland during the early seventeenth century. In December 1601, Walter Raleigh sold his 42,000 acre Irish estate to Richard Boyle for the paltry sum of £1500. The purchase included the towns of Youghal, Cappoquin and Lismore, all linked by the navigable River Blackwater, as well as castles, lands and fisheries, with the extra bonus of the ship Pilgrim. Temple Michael, Molana Abbey and the parkland at Ballynatray were also now given over to Richard Boyle. Richard Boyle had a substantial residence, known today as ‘The College’, close to St. Mary’s Collegiate Church.

   Boyle set to settle his lands with English planters, and to build towns and forts. On 25 July 1603, he married his second wife, Miss Fenton, daughter of Sir J. Fenton, Master of the Rolls. On this occasion, at St Mary’s Church, he was knighted by Sir George Carew. He was created a Privy-Councillor in 1606, Lord Boyle, Baron of Youghal in 1616, Viscount Dungarvan and Earl of Cork in 1620, and in 1629 he was made Lord-Justice, in conjunction with his son-in-law, Viscount Loftus; Boyle was made Lord-Treasurer in 1631. His mansion in Dublin, on the site of the present City Hall, gave the name to Cork-hill. He selected as his family motto “God’s providence is my inheritance.”

    Richard Boyle’s main estates were in counties Cork and Waterford but the estate also owned significant property in county Kerry, including lands in the baronies of Corkaguiny and Dunkerron South. Roger Boyle, a younger son of the 1st Earl of Cork, was created Earl of Orrery in 1660 and was granted lands in counties Cork, Kerry, Limerick and Kilkenny in 1666 amounting to almost 14,000 acres. Indeed the extent of Boyle’s estates will really only be revealed through the publication of the UCC project under Dr Colin Rynne and Dr David Edwards in the next year or so.

More next week…

 

Captions:

815a. Proposed portrait of Richard Boyle, early 1600s (source: Cork City Library)

815b. Youghal Main Street from the top of the Clock Tower looking towards the Blackwater Estuary, taken during a recent fieldtrip of the Irish Post Medieval and ArchaeologyGroup (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

815b. Youghal Main Street from the top of the Clock Tower looking towards the Blackwater Estuary

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 15 October 2015

814a. Depiction of Cork’s interior dock, the Watergate complex

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article, 

Cork Independent, 15 October 2015

Cork Harbour Memories (Part 33)

 A Busy Seventeenth Century Settlement

 

 Cork in the first decades of the seventeenth century was valued as the third most important port after Dublin and Waterford. The growth in prosperity was mainly attributed to the increase in utilization of the surrounding pastoral hinterland surrounding the city. Large sections of woods were cleared in Munster to accommodate the large demand for pasturalism. However, in 1610, a report by the commission of the Munster Plantation noted that the woods were being depleted too fast in order to clear land so sheep could graze on it.

  In the early 1600s, it is recorded that the main areas that Cork was importing from and exporting to included Seville in Spain, Lisbon in Portugal, St Malo and the Saintonge area in the south-west of France, cities in the north of Italy such as Pisa, western English port cities such as Bristol, Cologne and the Rhine area in Germany and towns such as Delft in northern Holland. New trading connections were also established with the Canary Islands and Jersey. The main imports from the first four countries in the above list mainly consisted of wine while from the others iron and salt were the principal imports. This is also reflected in the archaeological evidence from sites with preserved late medieval contexts. A large percentage of the pottery discovered dating to the seventeenth century was from the warm temperate countries where wine was grown.  

  Hides, tallow, pipestaves, rugs and friezes were the main exports along with cattle, wool and some butter. There was an increasing trade in beef, which led to the moving of slaughter houses or shambles outside the city walls. Indeed, such was the extent of active trade in Cork whether it be exporting or importing, that there was increased activity in the pirate activities. It eventually reached the stage where special convoys were introduced to protect merchant ships especially around the south coast.

    The physical nature of the walled city appears constantly in Cork Corporation priority list regarding revamps. The old Corporation records detail the worsening condition of the town walls. In January 1609, a plan to build a new court house on the site of King’s Castle, which was the northern control tower of the central Watergate into the town, was delayed. The walls onto which the courthouse were be attached were crumbling and in danger of collapsing. New walls would have to be built, so the new courthouse could be built.

   The poor condition of the town walls continued to be a major issue for the Corporation into the decades of the 1610s and 1620s and even the bridges leading into the town were described as ruinous and calls were made for them to be mended. From 1614 on, all monies earned by the Corporation from taxing imports such as wine were to be spent the repairing of the walls. However, by 1620, it was agreed that the incoming revenue into the settlement’s coffers was not enough and a bye-law was passed where several municipal rates were to be brought in as well as increasing of existing rates. Taxes were raised on several regularly exported commodities such as animal feed such as oats, animal skins such as horse, deer, fox and on drinks such as beer and wine. However, the taxes regarding docking your boat, passage through the city, tax on the land you owned were abolished.

   In 1620, an English traveller described Cork as “ a populous town and well compact, nothing to commend it…the town stands in a very bog and is unhealthy”. The physical state of the town also became an issue in May 1622 when lightning struck one of the thatched roofs in the eastern part of the city which caused a large scale fire to rapidly spread from one thatched roof to the next. According to the historical records, the fire began between eleven and twelve o’ clock in the morning.   Indeed, apart from one clap of lightning there was also a second clap of lightning which lit the houses in the western part of the city. It is detailed that the since the houses overlooking the main street were in flames, the people trapped between the two fires were forced to flee into the city’s main churches, Christ church on South Main Street and St. Peter’s on North Main Street. Both of these churches are recorded as being constructed of stone and having a slated roof which saved the lives of numerous townspeople. The people who did not make into the churches were unfortunately consumed by the fire itself. In September 1622, an order was passed that the stone walls be built and the roofs be replaced by slate or timber boards.

   The early seventeenth century was an era of unprecedented social upheaval whereby a large part of society consisted of a Catholic majority ruled by a Protestant sovereign. As the seventeenth century progressed, Catholicism became more a political movement than a religious one which aligned itself and made full use the church in Rome as a reason for rebellion.

 To be continued…..

 

Captions:

 814a. Depiction of Cork’s interior dock, the Watergate complex, from John Speed’s ‘Corke’ from his Province of Munster c.1610-11 (source: Cork City Library)

 814b. Depiction of Cork Harbour and East Cork from section of John Speed’s Province of Munster, c.1610-11 (source: Cork City Library)

 814b. Depiction of Cork Harbour and East Cork