The Marina: 250 years of Leeside industry

Evolving from a vast expanse of unusable marshland into one of the city’s most thriving industrial areas, Cork’s iconic Marina has accumulated more than 250 years of fascinating and colourful history.

It all began when a long tract of muddy soil that stretched from City Hall to Blackrock Castle, known as slob land, was reclaimed in the mid-1700s by the Cork Harbour Commission.

As the city grew, the necessity for the passage of much larger ships into Cork’s quays required that mud and silt be dredged up from the bed of the River Lee.

The dredged up soil was then deposited behind the Navigation Wall, a wall built during the 1760s by the Cork Corporation to prevent the river from filling with mud. Over time the deposited soil was compacted and became hard, completing the land’s reclamation and forming the solid base of the Marina we know today.

Named by the Gaelic poet Donncha Ó Floinn after a stretch of reclaimed land in Palermo, Sicily, the newly formed Marina first became home to the old Cork Park Racecourse, which in later years became the more permanent Cork Showgrounds.

The Showgrounds went on to enjoy great success for many years, attracting huge crowds and gaining attention far and wide. However, by the 1900s its success had begun to dwindle and in 1917 the racecourse closed its doors for good.

This opened the door for Henry Ford to establish the world’s first Ford manufacturing plant outside of the US.

Ford, whose family hailed from the small village of Ballinascarthy in West Cork, got to work building his enormous factory on the site of the old racecourse and on 3 July 1919 the first ever Cork-built Fordson tractor was produced.

The new factory enjoyed a long and successful tenure on Cork’s Marina employing more than 20,000 people during its 67 year lifespan and even producing a successful football team.

In the 1930s the plant survived the Great Depression and an economic war between Britain and Ireland before seeing a great economic upturn towards the end of the turbulent decade when it dominated the Irish market.

Meanwhile Ford had acquired a new neighbour in the form of tyre manufacturer Irish Dunlop which had established a new production plant on the Marina.

When WWII began in 1939, car production stopped completely and the Ford factory began making tools and equipment for the Irish Army until 1946 when the company resumed normal work.

The plant was finally closed in 1984 when Ireland’s entry into the European Economic Community (EEC) made it difficult for Ford to compete with cheaper cars imported from Europe.

Since the Ford factory’s closure, the Marina has been developed into a thriving hub of industry and is now home to the Marina Commercial Park, a 25 acre site home to more than 150 diverse businesses.

The park was opened in 1989 and currently employs over 1,500 people.

While the future is unwritten, there are major plans for Cork's Docklands as the area will be the main focus for the planned expansion of the city. The Marina is set to become an area of huge growth and regeneration over the next 20 years.