fullastern
14-08-2008, 17:11
It's well over three years now since I moved to live in Cork and there are still a few things I haven't unpacked since my arrival. I've been a collector of books, especially history books, all my life and I turned up one today that I hadn't seen for some time.
Cobh - Architectural Heritage is a small paperback published in 1979 by An Foras Forbartha which was a state body called, in English, the National Institute for Physical Planning and Construction Research Ltd. (a bit of a mouthful to say the least). It was originally planned that this book or booklet - it's only 86 pages - would be part of a series on architecturally important Irish towns. So far as I know there were only a handful of the books in the series published, including Cobh and Fermoy and Foras Forbartha was abolished in 1993 with some of its functions taken over by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Anyway the book is an architectural inventory of all the buildings in the town of Cobh - well those over 80 years old anyway. My own house is in it though the description isn't much - "a small, two bay, two storey house" (They obviously didn't know that I have a basement too).
Some of the descriptions - those of the town's major buildings - are much more detailed and there are some photos taken in 1979 (see below). It's an interesting record too of some of the shops and pubs in the town back in 1979 including a photo of the Well House which appears to be a pub on one side and a shop on the other because there's some plastic ice-cream cones on display in the window!
The photo of pubs in Casement Square is interesting - the four in question are all still there but three now have different names: The Saints (Tarrants), Ryans (still Ryans), The Seagull Bar (the Lusitania) and the Rotunda (the Mauretania). Incidentally the old hanging sign from the Seagull can still be seen - it's attached to the wall near the counter in Kelly's Bar!
I'll come back to some of the other descriptions soon.
Cobh - Architectural Heritage is a small paperback published in 1979 by An Foras Forbartha which was a state body called, in English, the National Institute for Physical Planning and Construction Research Ltd. (a bit of a mouthful to say the least). It was originally planned that this book or booklet - it's only 86 pages - would be part of a series on architecturally important Irish towns. So far as I know there were only a handful of the books in the series published, including Cobh and Fermoy and Foras Forbartha was abolished in 1993 with some of its functions taken over by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Anyway the book is an architectural inventory of all the buildings in the town of Cobh - well those over 80 years old anyway. My own house is in it though the description isn't much - "a small, two bay, two storey house" (They obviously didn't know that I have a basement too).
Some of the descriptions - those of the town's major buildings - are much more detailed and there are some photos taken in 1979 (see below). It's an interesting record too of some of the shops and pubs in the town back in 1979 including a photo of the Well House which appears to be a pub on one side and a shop on the other because there's some plastic ice-cream cones on display in the window!
The photo of pubs in Casement Square is interesting - the four in question are all still there but three now have different names: The Saints (Tarrants), Ryans (still Ryans), The Seagull Bar (the Lusitania) and the Rotunda (the Mauretania). Incidentally the old hanging sign from the Seagull can still be seen - it's attached to the wall near the counter in Kelly's Bar!
I'll come back to some of the other descriptions soon.