The quiet Cork city street that was once a bustling trade centre 

Yes, Blarney Street may well be the longest street in Ireland. However, it looks like a tie for the position with Main Street, Cookstown, Co. Tyrone, which claims to be 1.25 miles. 

On May 1 last year, on my trusty bike and with GPS watch on wrist, I measured an even mile from Shandon Street to Strawberry Hill (where the city boundary long stood) and a further .24 brought me through Pokertown to the junction with Shanakiel.

But, if I nudged on to Calvary, I would have clocked 1.25, making Blarney Street and Cookstown even at 1¼ miles, or 2km. Cookstown, though, is notably broad and flat, and in 1985 hosted “a right Cookstown sizzler” with a straight mile road-running race. A similar event on Blarney Street would be more akin to hill-running.

Highway to Muskerry

But it has only been “Blarney Street” since 1865. For centuries before that it was known as “Blarney-lane”, and further back again, on Hardiman’s map of Cork from 1602, it appears as the “Highway to Muskerry”. The change from ‘lane’ to ‘street’ was made at a meeting of the city’s “Improvement Committee” when Messrs. Lacy, Harper and Murphy complained they were finding it hard to let houses on it and requested a name change. ‘Lane’ had become synonymous with old, narrow and tending to dilapidated by then. An unsuccessful proposal was “North Castle Street”. Another matter arising at that meeting, incidentally, was the nuisance caused by bathing in the Lee on Sunday mornings opposite St. Mary’s Church, Pope’s Quay. Too close a coming together of the profane and the sacred perhaps.

The way of the cow

To properly understand Blarney Street we have to travel back in time and deep into the countryside. Our roads formed piecemeal, evolving gradually. The Irish word for a road, after all, is ‘bóthar’, the ‘way of the cow’, which puts us in mind of a meandering track that cattle beat out with their hooves when people chose steep climbs and elevated ridges to avoid the soft, boggy ground. In this respect, the uphill climb of Blarney Street bears testament to its antiquity. So too the fact that it forms townland boundaries. Three of these ancient land divisions converge at Blair’s Hill and the street also forms one side of Knocknaheeny and divides Shanakill from Hollyhill.

Outside the City Walls

In the 1500s, Cork was a loyal city, loyal to the English crown. Hollinshead, writing at the time, said the inhabitants were troubled by outlaws from the surrounding countryside (the ‘mere Irish’ perhaps) and any stranger entering had to give up his arms. The gates were guarded “at church service time, at mealtimes and from sun to sun”. But gradually the city overspilled its walls and the lane to Blarney of the MacCarthys, Lords of Muskerry, began to fill in.

An old record tells us that in 1634 John and Christopher Waters had thatched dwellings on it. They also had a tanyard and a garden fenced with banks. Christopher sublet part of his to Tadgh McDermott and his wife for a yearly rent of 15s 6d and a Shrove hen. Twenty years later, in 1654, they had lost their property in the intervening political turmoil and a Richard Smith succeeded them.

A man by the name of Kidney, born some years later again, became a market gardener and died in 1799 at the remarkable age of 120. This would mean he was born in 1679. He worked close to the time he died, saying idleness shortens life. Regardless of whether he was quite 120, Mr Kidney “ed Blarney Lane to be forest connected with Dunscombe’s Wood”. This conjures up a very different landscape to today with woods stretching from upper Blarney Street to Clogheen and Mount Desert where the Dunscombe family resided.

The beef trade

We had a brief mention of a tanyard, but it is a telling one because for centuries the street served as a vital highway funnelling people, cattle and goods into the city from the countryside. 

Until as late as the 1760s, the Lee was crossed by just two bridges with much of the traffic from the north and west coming down Blarney Street to the North Gate, and from the south down the Bandon Road to the South Gate. 

Cork grew as a major centre for the provisioning trade with traders coming from Spain, Portugal, North America and the Caribbean for salted beef, tallow, hides and butter. September, in particular, saw Cork get very busy. 

That was when the slaughtering season began and thousands of grass-fattened bullocks were driven in along the highways and byways. They would rest on the outskirts for a few days before going in for slaughter throughout the autumn. Buying was done at a three-day market beginning on St Matthew’s Day, September 21.

But as the trade grew markets became twice weekly and, later, daily, just off Blarney Street. 

The site today is cut through the middle by St Anthony’s Road. The 1760s saw the peak of the trade with up to 900 animals slaughtered daily during the 90-day season.

A luxuriant diet

In addition to slaughtering, glue yards, tanneries, cooperages, tallow chandleries and salt works all developed and afforded employment. People had a livelihood but were affected in other ways too such as by the waste, blood, and smells permeating everywhere. 

A Cork doctor, John Rogers, writing in 1735, commented, “in no part of the earth is a greater quantity of meat consumed than in this place by all sorts and conditions of people during the slaughtering season. The vast profusion and plenty, and the low price tempt the poorer sort to riot in this luxuriant diet”.

Rural migration

The need for labour drew in seasonal migration, much of it coming down Blarney Street. 

Arthur Young, the agriculturalist, mentioned in 1776 that the population of Cork was 67,000 but grew by 20,000 from September. Many gave up rural life for good and stayed. 

Most were young, unskilled and settled in the maze of alleys and lanes between Shandon Street (or Mallow Lane as it was known), Blarney Street and Fair Lane in low thatched houses. 

But when the busy season came to an end, scarcity raised its head. Dr Rogers said the people were left “to live on offal,” and a lack of good bread and citrus fruit weakened their constitutions. Overcrowding, seasonal scarcity and lack of education led to social disorder.

Straight as the barrel of a gun

Suitably enough, it’s to butter we turn to next. Trade may have been booming but road conditions, as well as social conditions, were terrible. 

So much so that an Act of Parliament in 1747 led to the reconstruction of the road “leading from the City of Cork through Millstreet into the county of Kerry”. 

The contractor for the 56 miles of work was John Murphy of Castleisland and it came to be known as the ‘Butter Road’, and later, the ‘Old Kerry Road’. It terminated with Blarney Street and long sections were said to be “as straight as the barrel of a gun”.

Murphy’s work reaffirmed Blarney Street as a primary entry point into the city. Butter had now sured beef as the preeminent Cork product with the famous Exchange opening in 1770. 

So much so that in parts of the world during the peak of the trade, the word ‘Cork’ implied ‘quality butter’ as much as the place itself. May was to the trade what September was to the cattle trade.

Big city shopping

The mounting buzz of activity greeting the countryman or woman travelling down Blarney Street and nearing the city for the first time must have made a lasting impression. It must have seemed a lively, exciting environment but also an alien one. 

The city’s shops and public houses were, naturally, glad of the business and geared themselves for it. Signs with eye-catching symbols guided the illiterate, and the sometimes gullible. Groceries, salt, timber and metalware, such as spades from nearby Monard mills, filled their carts when they returned to the country.

The hazards of travel

The journey for some was long and arduous, with exposure to rain and wind and few places to overnight. 

Foreign travellers remarked seeing people sitting backwards on their horses to avoid getting the brunt of the rain on their faces. One hazard that had abated by the 19th century was highwaymen. 

Even so, those returning from Cork carrying money or goods still sought to travel in company. 

Another hazard people faced was supernatural forces such as the Sprid of Máma that might be encountered going over Mushera. 

This variously took the form of a black shadow or a woman with foxy hair who launched ferocious attacks. Big Jim from Chicago, 6ft 9in, and originally from Kilcorney, was said to have fought her off with the aid of a blackthorn stick.

A city of crafts

We’ve talked about beef and butter, but Cork was also a city of skills, crafts and small-scale manufacturing.

A strip at the base of Blarney Street was known as ‘Brogue-maker’s Hill’.

Other old street names also reflect this. There was Combmakers Lane, Crispins Lane (St. Crispin was patron of leather workers), Fuller’s Lane (a fuller cleansed freshly sheared wool), Malthouse Lane, Nailor’s Alley, Ropewalk Lane, Tanner’s Row, Tinker’s Lane, Weaver’s Alley. These were essentially ancient crafts and Blarney Street was also known for a weaving population. 

But many went into decline and a writer in the 1840s mourned those flourishing when he was a boy. He recalled the gold beaters of Bachelor’s Quay, the watch and clock makers of the North Main Street and the sugar refining and wool weaving that occupied many in Fair Lane and Blarney Street.

Effects of mass production

English mass manufacture took hold and the old occupations declined. In 1841, 8,000 men were employed in manufacturing in Cork, dropping to just over 4,000 in 1901. 

Home textile production shrank hugely between 1820 and 1850 and weaver’s wages fell from as high as 5s. a day to 1s. 

A soap factory on Blarney Street, Moylans, went up for sale in 1838. Some activities did weather the decline. 

In 1874, there were mattress-making and woollen factories on the street, while Sullivan Feather Merchants and Hegarty Tanning (not sunbeds!) made it into the 20th century.

Poverty and want

Poverty and want were still never very far away and, with it, social disorder. In May 1826, the Donovans and the Baldwins were at it again on the street. 

This time the trouble stemmed from a dispute between two of the children, and the fathers, mothers and sisters fought with irons (perhaps fire tongs and pans). Bad cuts and bruises were caused and the judge called the conduct “abominably disgraceful”. The jury brought in a ‘guilty’ verdict against one from each side.

“We are starving”

But more often than not there was a quiet dignity in poverty. In the same month, a large procession wended its way around the northside.

The raggedy children were put at the front, to show it was sincere and peaceful, and its main banner read – “We Want Employment – Ourselves and Our Families are Starving”. It made its way along Boyce’s Street, Sunday’s Well Avenue, Blarney Street, Shandon Street, out to Blackpool Bridge, and back in the Watercourse Road and offered no offence to person or property.

Still, it was stopped by Sherrif Spearling on Patrick Street. The placards were taken away and it was ordered to disperse. 

The aim had been to reach the mayor’s house and a slight scuffle ensued with Mr Spearling receiving “a small scratch in the face”. The Mayor arrived and, with characteristic discretion, asked that a deputation call on him the next day.

Bread atop a pole

Twenty years on, on the eve of the Great Famine, there wasn’t much improvement. This time, in 1846, 200 labourers assembled in Blarney Street. They were led by a man bearing a loaf of bread atop a pole and processed through the city, again to highlight want and lack of employment.

Again, it proved painless enough for the authorities to disperse them. They were likely weak with hunger. Illnesses like cholera and typhus were always feared and the workhouse was a looming dread.

House collapses

The street wasn’t without well-constructed buildings but there were plenty poor structures and as late as 1881 a mother and child were killed in a house collapse. In 1900 Timothy O’Callaghan and family had a lucky escape and an early ‘go fund me’ went out for them in the Cork Examiner as their means of livelihood was literally buried.

Total abstinence

There is no escaping the prominence of alcohol in social history, but its counterpoint, abstinence, became increasingly important.

In the heyday of the Apostle of Temperance, Fr. Theobald Mathew, Blarney Street had two temperance centres, one at either end of the street and both represented at the great annual march of 1842.

Inter-lane rivalry

Cork’s notorious inter-lane rivalry may even have raised its ugly head in matters of temperance when Blarney Lane was mistakenly credited with fundraising that had been the work of Fair Lane. 

That was probably an innocent mistake, but in 1829 Thomas Magner and Cornelius Lynch were convicted for being “part of the gang of fellows (regularly) assembling in Fair-lane and Blarney-lane on Sundays and Holydays to throw stones at each other – or what was termed to “batter””. 

In this instance, they damaged John Deasy’s house. The judge withheld sentence to enable them make compensation, windows and doors having been broken.

Cork’s own town

For all its problems, Cork’s inhabitants were always fond of it, as we see from a verse from a song from 1828 (note ‘Aiden’ refers to ‘Eden’, denoting paradise):- Cork’s Own Town Air – “They may rail at this life” ….. if you want to behold the sublime and the beauteous, Put your toes in your brogues, and see sweet Blarney-lane Where the parents and childer is comely and duteous, And “dry lodgin” both rider and beast entertain.

In the cellars below dines the slashin’ young fellows, And what comes with the butter from distant Tralee; While the lan’lady, chalking the score on the bellows, Sings Cork is an Aiden, for you love, and me. …..

Yield Right of Way

Shanakiel wasn’t a through road until the 1870s when the curved section to Calvary was built.

Even then, Blarney Street retained primacy until around 2006 when the junction between the two at Calvary was relined and the priority changed.

Thus ended, formally and finally, Blarney Street’s importance as a routeway, though in reality, it had become a quiet residential street long before then.