FAMINE MEMORIAL

Erected to the memory of all those who died in the Cork Workhouse during The Great Hunger – An Gorta Mór.

Go raibh suaimhness síorraí acu I láthair Dia na Glóire

Famine Commemoration Committee

1997

James Connolly

5 June 1868 – 12 May 1916

The Irish patriot and socialist James Connolly was one of the signatories to the Irish Proclamation of Independence in 1916 and was executed as one of the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising.

On the 7th March 1911 he addressed an open-air public meeting in Cobh on the case for government provision of meals for poor children in Irish schools. His opponents provoked a riot, and Connolly was forced to flee. He was given refuge in the bar of this building, then called the Rob Roy Hotel, until the mob dispersed.

This plaque commemorates the centenary of the event.

James Connolly returned to Cobh in 1913 without incident.

Grand Parade

Dún Mhuire

‘... photograph, c. 1960, shows the attractive building at the riverside end of the Grand Parade, then known as Dún Mhuire. Originally called Daly’s Clubhouse and later the City Club, it dates from around 1787, but was extensively altered and refaced to the design of Sir John Benson. In 1952, the City Club having amalgamated with the County Club at the latter’s South Mall premises, this building was purchased at auction for £9,125 by the Legion of Mary for use as a Diocesan headquarters. It was officially opened as Dún Mhuire on 7 December 1952. In more recent times, it has become a financial business premises.’

CORK In Old Photographs – Tim Cadogan (2003 Gill & Macmillan Ltd)

St. John's Square, Great William O'Brien St

FARREN ST GROTTO

‘A stone sign on a derelict house at Farren Street bears the year 1737. Here at the top end of this old street, looking towards St. Mary’s Road, is a grotto which, attractive though it is, is merely a prop used in the filming of “Angela’s Ashes” in the area in 1988’

Cork’s Own Blackpool – Photographic Memories  - Blackpool Historical Society (2003)

‘When I was a child, our walks often took us to the Good Shepherd Convent, in the orphanage of which she had grown up. I liked it because it had trees and steep lawns and pleasant avenues. On fine days we sat with one of her old friends on the lawn that overlooked the valley of the river, or, on showery ones, in the grotto of the nuns’ cemetery, and Mother of Perpetual Succour, who was in charge of the garden, took me round and picked me fruit, and I suspect that sometimes, when things were not going well at home, Mother Blessed Margaret gave Mother small gifts of money and clothes. In the convent cemetery, among the tiny crosses, among the tiny crosses of the nuns, was a big monument to one of the orphans, an infant known as Little Nellie of Holy God, who had suffered and died in a particularly edifying way, and about whom, at the time, a certain cult was growing up. I had a deep personal interest in her, because not only was I rather in that line myself, but Father had assisted at her exhumation when her body was removed from a city cemetery, and verified the story that it was perfectly preserved…..’

Frank O’Connor- An Only Child

BRYAN J. FOLEY 1934 – 1997
This memorial has been erected to honour Bryan J. Foley F.I.C.S. who campaigned for over 25 years for a Cross River Ferry. He saw his dream come to fruition on 17th March 1993. Bryan’s achievement was duly acknowledged in 1996 when he became the first person to be awarded Cork Businessman of the Year in recognition of the establishment of the Cross River Ferry.

This Plaque has been Erected

to the Memory of

JACK DOYLE   1913 – 1978

By

His fellow Citizens of Cobh

By Hosts of Admirers at Home and Abroad

And by his Colleagues of the

Ex Boxers Association

‘…..When I resumed, it was not at St Patrick’s but the North Monastery, run by the Christian Brothers – I cannot think why unless it meant that I should be out of Corkery’s class and back in Downey’s. Mother, I suspect, may have been influenced by her friendship with Mrs Busteed, whom she met regularly at Mass, for her brilliant son, who had gone to the North Monastery, had had his picture in the paper and was now at the University, and it would never have occurred to Mother that what had worked for him would not work for me.

It was very inconvenient, because it was miles from home, and on rainy days I reached school drenched and cold. The road led past the military barrack on the brow of the hill and then down a dirt track called Fever Hospital Hill to the Brewery, before climbing again through slums to the top of another hill. But the view from Fever Hospital Hill was astonishing, and often delayed me when I was already late. The cathedral tower and Shandon steeple, all limestone and blue sandstone, soared off the edge of the opposite hill, and the hillside, terraced to the top with slums, stood so steep that I could see every lane in it, and when the light moved across it on a spring day, the whole hillside seemed to sway like a field of corn, and sometimes when there was no wind to stir the clouds, I could hear it murmuring to itself like a hive of bees.’

Frank O’Connor- An Only Child