Cork
Corcach Mór Mumhan—the great marsh of Munster—was the ancient name of the modern Corcaigh, anglicized as Cork. The marsh, a term still used colloquially to describe the heart of the old city, was the area where the river Lee became estuarial, threading itself through various islands. Old Cork was bounded by the two main channels (north and south) of the river, famously described by Edmund Spenser: "The spreading Lee that like an island fayre / Encloseth Cork with his divided flood." The seminal urban settlement was the seventh-century monastery and school associated with Saint Finbarr (or Bairre). It was situated on a ridge overlooking the river from the south side, not far from where the modern (Church of Ireland) Saint Fin Barre's Cathedral stands on the site of its predecessors.
The Scandinavian settlement of the "south island," the present South Main Street area, dates from the mid-ninth century. Native Irish as well as foreigners figured in this early urban development. With the arrival of the Anglo-Normans in the later twelfth century, the physical layout of the city was established in a form that lasted essentially until the late eighteenth century—one main street running from south gate to north gate with a separating strip of water midway, along what later became the filled-in Castle Street and Liberty Street.
Cork's earliest surviving charter was granted by King John in 1185. The city was primarily dependent on agricultural produce from the hinterland and therefore on commercial contacts with the Gaelic Irish who stood in uneasy relationship with the burgesses, particularly so during the native resurgence from the late fourteenth century. The sense of a city under siege is well documented at that period. Moreover, the small population (between 1,300 and 2,000) was ravaged by the Black Death in 1349. Nevertheless, the city prospered in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the important port greatly facilitating its development. Trade was conducted with England (notably with Bristol), Scotland, and France; the exports included skins, hides, beef, grain, and wool, and the main imports were wine, cloth, and spices.
The great political, religious, and plantation upheavals from the mid-sixteenth century saw the Old English ruling class (loyal in politics but Catholic in religion) eventually supplanted in Cork by a New English/Protestant elite. The period from the middle of the eighteenth century to the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815 was a golden age for Cork's economy. The population grew rapidly—to 41,000 in 1750, 57,000 in
1796, and a remarkable 80,000 by 1821. Cork remained Ireland's second city (after Dublin) until 1841; thereafter, industrial Belfast pulled ahead.
The Cork butter market handled nearly half of all Irish butter exports by 1789. Beef and pork exports were similarly impressive—provisioning British navy and army supply ships was a thriving business—and prosperous textile and tanning industries provided substantial employment and goods for export as well as the domestic market.
Cork has always identified itself with its harbor. The motto on the city's crest is statio bene fida carinis—"a trustworthy anchorage for ships." The harbor was important for British naval supremacy but was even more vital for commercial life. Cork was always a commercial rather than an industrial city, but a general decline in both sectors set in after the Napoleonic wars. There was a sharp decrease in agricultural prices and a falling-off in the provisioning trade, a result of the adverse impact of Anglo-Irish market integration following the Act of Union.
Meanwhile, the city was undergoing significant physical expansion beginning in the late eighteenth century. Channels were filled in and numerous bridges, including the imposing Saint Patrick's Bridge, were built, with Saint Patrick's Street becoming Cork's main thoroughfare. Throughout the nineteenth century suburban residence became the norm for the middle classes, and the areas of Sunday's Well, Tivoli, and Blackrock were variously favored by the merchant princes. Beginning in 1898 the tramline system offered citizens a reliable and economic means of enjoying residence in the suburbs while working and shopping in the city.
Queen's College (from 1908, University College) opened in 1849, making Cork a university town as well as a port and harbor city. In terms of nineteenth-century suburban growth the college was the catalyst for the development of the striking western approaches to the city. The handsome buildings and riverside grounds have given a distinctive and elegant appearance to that neighborhood over a hundred and fifty years.
Over 70 percent of all Cork families were living in slums during the second half of the nineteenth century. Leaders of the working classes were conservatives, socially speaking, concerned with preserving the aristocracy of the artisans against the unskilled workers. The lower classes were encouraged by the churches and the media to accept their "station in life" and they were diverted from socialist objectives by the lure of nationalist aspirations. Meanwhile, the professional and merchant classes were divided along sectarian lines. Catholics were envious of Protestant Ascendancy in municipal politics until something of a level playing field for the religious majority was eventually created by such measures as the Municipal Corporations Act of 1840 and the Local Government Act of 1898, and the city council gradually became more representative.
Cork nationalist politics were exciting and turbulent in the faction-ridden years after the death of Charles Stewart Parnell, MP for the city from 1880 to 1891. The most colorful and volatile figure at the turn of the century was journalist and politician William O'Brien. Later, the radical nationalist tradition in Cork found strong expression in the resurgence of Sinn Féin after 1916. The momentous highlights of this period were the murder of Lord Mayor Tomás MacCurtain in March 1920; the death from hunger strike in October of his mayoral successor, Terence MacSwiney; and the burning of the city center by Crown forces in December. Since then, the office of lord mayor has had particular prestige in Cork.
Notwithstanding urban growth and spread throughout the twentieth century, there is an immemorial charm about old Cork that was once described (doubtless with the genteel grandeur of Sunday's Well and Montenotte in mind) as "a city of tattered grace." The winding channels of the Lee and its numerous bridges make for a variety of Italianate vistas, glimpsed by the walker from midstream bridges or through narrow lanes. These views often feature Cork's symbolic and most famous landmark, the clock tower of Saint Anne's, Shandon, with its nostalgic bells "that sound so grand on / The pleasant waters of the river Lee" (O'Mahony, "The Bells of Shandon").
Industrialization in Cork in the decades after independence (1922) was dominated by such plants as Ford's and Dunlop's, which afforded steady employment for decades to great numbers of Cork workers. The Sunbeam textiles factory was also important in the Cork economy. Under native government there were great advances in public housing, and in Cork vast local-authority estates were built on the south side at Ballyphehane and on the steep slopes above the North Cathedral, siphoning the population away from the decayed "marsh" area in the city center. Meanwhile, the outer suburbs continued to proliferate.
When the staple employment industries of car assembly and textiles collapsed in the 1970s under Common Market pressure, they were replaced in time by chemical plants, electronic businesses, and high-tech industries with a new wave of inward investment from multinationals. Cork shared in the remarkable "Celtic Tiger" prosperity of the 1990s and was worried by the signs of slowdown in 2001.
In the last decades of the millennium, enlightened municipal management arrested and reversed innercity dereliction. Mean alleys have been transformed into settings for continental-style bistros and boutiques, fine plazas have been created, and there has been much imaginative pedestrianization. A land-use and transportation study (LUTS) was gradually implemented to deal with ever-growing traffic problems.
The harbor, so crucial to the Cork economy for centuries, has continued to play a central role in greatly changed circumstances. In earlier years, grain, coal, fruit, and timber imports brought about storage and workhouse facilities in the dock areas. Various harbor activities, as well as the vital business of dredging, came under the auspices of the Harbour Commissioners, whose splendid headquarters is a notable architectural landmark in respect of both facade and interior. The political significance of the harbor was underlined in 1938 when the British handover of naval bases, in Cork harbor as elsewhere, completed the process of sovereignty transfer that had begun in 1922. Today, large cross-channel and continental ferries constitute another facet of harbor business, as do the numerous industrial and chemical sites from Little Island to the lower harbor in the Ringaskiddy area. Meanwhile, international travel in and out of the city was transformed and intensified by the development of the thriving Cork Airport (opened in 1961), which combines efficiency with a warm and distinctive local flavor. According to the latest census figures, there were 127,000 people living within the municipal limits in 1996, with a further 53,000 in the suburbs.
Finally, we may observe that traditional rivalry between north side and south side is subsumed in a general Cork personality, recognized as distinctive by natives and outsiders alike. Apart from their renowned singsong-accented speech, Cork people tend to be perceived elsewhere in Ireland as wily, opinionated, self-confident to the point of hubris, ambitious, with a penchant for taking over the top jobs nationally, able, witty, garrulous, and ostensibly friendly and charming but clannish to a degree!
