Cork Heritage Open Day

Another Cork heritage open day is looming. The 2024 event will take place on Saturday 17 August.

For one day only, over 40 buildings open their doors free of charge for this special event. Members of the public are allowed a glimpse of some of Cork's most fascinating buildings ranging from the medieval to the military, the civic to the commercial and the educational to the ecclesiastical. This event was greeted with great enthusiasm by building owners and members of the public alike in 2023 with an estimated 20,000 people participating on the day.

It is always a great opportunity to explore behind some of Cork’s grandest buildings. With the past of a port city, Cork architecture has a personality that is varied and much is hidden amongst the city’s narrow streets and laneways.

It is a photogenic city, which lights up with sunshine as it hits the limestone buildings. Much of its architecture is also inspired by international styles – the British style of artwork and nineteenth century brick pervading in most cases– but it’s always pays to look up in Cork and marvel at the Amsterdamesque-style of our eighteenth century structures on streets such as Oliver Plunkett Street or at the gorgeous tall spires of the city’s nineteenth-century churches.

Cork Heritage Open Day is nineteen years in the making and with 40 buildings, it is almost impossible to visit them all in one day. It takes a few goes to get to them all and spend time appreciating their physical presence in our city but also the often hidden context of why such buildings and their communities came together and their contribution to the modern day picture of the city.

The team behind the Open Day, Cork City Council, do group the buildings into general themes: Steps and Steeples, Customs and Commerce, Medieval to Modern, Saints and Scholars and Life and Learning – one can walk the five trails to discover a number of buildings within these general themes.

These themes remind the participant to remember how our city spreads from the marsh to the undulating hills surrounding it, how layered and storied the city’s past is, how the city has been blessed to have many scholars contributing to its development in a variety of ways and how the way of life in Cork is intertwined with a strong sense of place and ambition.

For a small city, it packs a punch in its approaches to national and international interests.

One of the buildings, which is always open to celebrate all aspects historic in the city is the historic St Peter’s Church – now an exhibition centre – on North Main Street. The building is the second church to be built on its present site overlooking North Main Street. The first church was built sometime in the early fourteenth century. In 1782, the church was taken down and in 1783, the present limestone walled church, was begun to be built. At a later stage, a new tower and spire were added to the basic rectangular plan. The new spire though had to be taken down due to the marshy ground that it was built on.

In recent years and in accordance to the aims of the pilot project of the Cork Historic Centre Action and the finance of Cork City Council and operational support of Cork Civic Trust, St Peter’s Church has been extensively renovated and opened as an arts exhibition centre.

One of the most interesting monuments on display in the church is the Deane monument. This monument, dating to 1710, was dedicated to the memory of Sir Matthew Deane and his wife and both are depicted on the monument, shown in solemn prayer on both sides of an altar tomb.

Now a deconsecrated space, a historic graveyard was attached to the medieval parish church of St Peter. The graveyard is in use as a public amenity space. In 1750, Charles Smith in his ‘History of Cork’ in 1750 recorded that some of the gravestones had “dates as old as the year 1500”.

Antiquarian John Windele records the discovery in 1838, of numerous tombstones belonging to the “olden era of this church, forming the foundations of the building which preceded its present steeple shows to what uses the ancient remains connected with this building have been converted”.

Certainly, the site has undergone modification and possibly significant disturbance to underlying deposits. Burials within the church would have been substantially dislocated during the demolition works of 1782 and the construction of the present church.

During renovations to the church building during the 1990s skeletal remains were uncovered beneath the floor. Since 1975, Cork City Council has maintained the graveyard when it was then laid out as a park. There are thirteen headstones lining the northern boundary wall towards the back of the church. The headstones that are legible date to the eighteenth century. They are not in their original spot. The chest tomb of William Rogers (1686), also which remains in its original position in the graveyard.

A new exhibit at St Peter’s Church will underpin the facts and footnotes through the human accounts and experiences of Cork from 1912-1923. The exhibit is entitled Cork Voices of the Irish Revolution and is written and curated by long-time collaborator and historian Gerry White in conjunction with Cork Public Museum and UCC.

Cork Voices is the natural culmination point of the various exhibits and installations from the Decade of Commemorations in St Peters, following key events from brewing tensions with the Home Rule movement and the formation of the Irish Volunteers to the death of Cork’s own Michael Collins and the cessation of the Irish Civil War. The installation details the events as seen by the eyes of the people who lived it, illustrated by their words, and made real by the emotions captured in their testimony.