Michael Moynihan: A topographical history of Cork really puts the city on the map

I refer to the forthcoming historical atlas of Cork city which is to be issued by the Royal Irish Academy. There have been others — the likes of Youghal, Bandon and Dungarvan have been covered — but this is a big one. I gave Sarah Gearty of the Royal Irish Academy a shout about the Irish Historic Towns Atlas project.

“The likes of Youghal and Bandon are small areas, but we’ve also done Dublin, though we did it in parts. Dublin part 1 in medieval times, to the year 1610, and Dublin part 2, from 1610 to 1756," she said.

“Cork, though, is different.”

Who are you telling?

“There might have been an argument to break it into two, but the author who’s working on it, Howard Clarke, who’s been an editor with our project for years, was very keen on doing it as one part.

“It will be the biggest one we’ve ever produced, and the most exciting and challenging atlas we’ve done in the series. And part of the reason is we’re doing it all in one piece.

“What I mean by that is tracing, in one piece, the topographical history, or physical history, of the city up to 1900. We don’t really go up to the modern day because it’s a historical atlas, all the maps in the atlas will be looking at Cork from some aspect of the morphology or physicality of the city.

“To the north it goes as far as Blackpool and to the west the University and what was the city gaol. We’re not taking in the port area, for instance, because we’re keeping within the historical urban area, even though obviously Cork is much bigger than that.”

True (and good to see the RIA acknowledge that the story of Cork without Blackpool would be seriously deficient).

Changing city over the centuries

The reference to Cork’s physical history is interesting because the city has changed so much over the centuries. That’ll be reflected in the atlas.

“We’ll be dealing a lot with how Cork was built on what was originally a marsh in the middle of the city,” said Gearty.

“Howard [Clarke] did the Dublin atlas as well, so he’s bringing that experience to this project. He’s also a medievalist, so he would be coming at this project from that angle, and a lot of the maps would be showing previous layouts of the city.

“It’s been an amazing job. I’m the project coordinator but I also work on the mapping side specifically, so it’s been amazing to work on because there’s been so much change in Cork with the river, the transformation of Cork in the 18th century, and there’s been so much to do.

We drill right into the detail, and part of the work is reproducing old maps of the city.

"Those tend to be very attractive for people but there’ll also be plenty of maps of the city that people won’t have seen before, those will be reproduced in the atlas.

“We would have done Limerick and Galway already but Cork is just a whole other ball game.”

People will be aware of the Atlas of Cork City published a few years ago by Cork University Press, and Gearty says she and her colleagues are “building on that work. Ours is a very different style of project. We have a lot bigger format to work with, for instance, so we have more scope in terms of the map.

“That’s why I refer to A3 as the page size, people can probably envisage what’s involved that bit better, and we’ll have some maps within that, even, which fold out and become bigger again and cover huge amounts of the city.”

It was interesting, by the way, to hear how widespread the city atlas project is, and how it came about. Gearty told me it took off as a movement after World War II in Germany, where the natives were trying to record the old built fabric of the country after much of it had been destroyed.

“Our atlases began in the 80s after the Wood Quay controversy in Dublin,” she added. “That really raised awareness among people of urban heritage in Ireland.”

Having Cork’s urban heritage located in a European context like that is fascinating — and only appropriate, I hear a loud chorus say — because it means growth and evolution can be mapped and compared with comparable cities in Europe.

“We’re part of a wider European project in which towns and cities are mapped,” said Gearty.

"That helps geographers, experts in urban morphology, all of these different fields, to work out patterns that are common to cities, common to their development and so on.

19 historic projects across Europe

“There are 19 historic town atlas projects all over Europe and in theory when the atlas is finished it should be possible to compare Cork with over 580 other towns and cities around Europe which have been mapped out as well.”

That’s looking outward. There are benefits to locals as well.

“The idea of invisible heritage is something that maybe people are becoming more and more aware of," says Gearty.

“To take an example in Cork, think of the old town walls of the city. There might be little bits of it left but in its time it would have formed a full circuit around Cork complete with gates and towers.

“We’d hope the atlas will bring that out, that side of the built heritage we can’t see any more that will engage people. Or street names which record aspects of the city that don’t exist any more.

“We have about 8,000 sites recorded for Cork but many of those don’t exist any more or would be, say, a printing office in the 18th century which then became a bank the next century.

“So you can look at this in terms of each individual building like that. We’re trying to provide material for people to continue on with further research in their particular field, we’re trying to bring material together for others to work on in the future.”

Well, all this discussion of dates and years and times and ages raises a potentially awkward question .. ..

“We’re nearly there,” Gearty laughed.

“We’ve been supported by Cork City Council, and very well supported by them in fairness, so we have commitments in terms of a publication date this November. We have a huge amount of material and are well in production, though we hope there’ll be a digital element that could come out before November.

“And Howard will be giving a lecture in March in Cork on the atlas if people want to get a taste of what to expect. So it is the year of Cork.”

Isn’t it always?

See Irish Historic Towns Atlas for more.