I went on a Cork city tour with a theatrical twist — here's what happened
Angela Newman of Hysterical Histories Cork shares the unexpected tale of how the Rebel City got its nickname as she guides Irish Examiner Features writer Deirdre McArdle and her father Austin Murphy past Bishop Lucey Park. Picture: Chani Anderson
Being a tourist in your own city is an education and a delight. I brought my dad along to a Pick Your Own Path walking tour with Angela Newman, the co-founder of Hysterical Histories.
My dad was born in Oliver Plunkett St and called the city his playground in the early 1950s. Much as he had read and heard about the city’s history over the years, he’d never visited its many landmarks.
That’s not unusual, says Angela Newman, founder of Hysterical Histories.
“We tend not to do the tourist trails when we live in a city, unless we have visitors ourselves. We also think we know all there is to know about our own city, but in many cases, we’re only scratching the surface,” Newman says.
Newman meets us at Daunt Square, donning a bright yellow floor-length wool cape — like Red Riding Hood’s sunnier cousin. The cape is a relic from Bunratty Castle, and it is made from pure wool. It sets the scene.
As this isn’t your standard walking tour; Newman leans into her musical theatre background, acting out engaging anecdotes, teaching dance routines, luring unsuspecting journalists into the stocks in Elizabeth Fort.
And no tour is ever the same.
“I didn’t want to get bored doing the same route day in, day out” she says. At the start of each tour, attendees choose from four photographs that illustrate the four different tours: Rebel City, Saints & Sinners, Medieval Madness, and All the World’s a Stage. Throughout the tour, there are also opportunities to “stick or switch”, so tourists can chop and change to other routes at various points.
There is history everywhere you look in Cork, from Shandon Clock Tower and Elizabeth Fort to St Finbarr’s Cathedral and the English Market, and the tour covers all those familiar sights.
But the tour goes beyond the obvious, because Newman says the city’s history is also in the places you don’t look such as the upper stories of the buildings we walk past and the footpaths we walk on.
“I’ve travelled a lot over the years and lived away from Cork. I think coming back has given me a unique perspective. I’ve fallen down so many historical rabbit holes simply by looking up and seeing something I’d never noticed before.”
Newman grew up on Barrack St in the heart of the city. On one of our stops during the tour, at South Gate Bridge, she points out a dungeon in one of the archways.
“I couldn’t tell you how many times I crossed this bridge as a child — I even canoed under the bridge — and I never knew that dungeon was there until I started studying the history,” she says.
South Gate Bridge was a tolled bridge and one of the three entrances to the city going back to Norman times. A prison loomed over the bridge on the city side, hence the dungeon. The bridge also regularly hosted severed heads on spikes, and it was this gruesome display that prompted one of the country’s first health and safety charters in the last 1500s.
“Milkmaids would be crossing the bridge every day, from their farms on Barrack St into the city. But wisps of hair from the dead heads would end up in their milk, spoiling it. They’d have to dump their milk and go home empty-handed,” she adds.
Newman explains that the milkmaids banded together, wrote to the government and Britain’s Queen Elizabeth I got involved, demanding that the heads be moved from the bridge to the roof of the prison building. The heads were moved and the milkmaids went back about their business, said Newman.
As well as the facts and dates, Newman regularly doles out little gems like the “milkmaids and the dead heads” as we walk around — quirky historical anecdotes and stories about her childhood growing up in the city.
They bring the tour to life and make us howl with laughter on several occasions.
A story in Elizabeth Fort, which features more dead heads on spikes, saw my dad doubled over with laughter.
“A few years ago, a guide was giving a tour here and stopped in front of the heads to give his spiel. A girl in the tour group pointed up to one of the heads and says: ‘That’s me da.’
“The guide ignored her, but she kept repeating it. He eventually stopped and said: ‘What do you mean? These are model heads.’
“She says: ‘Yeah, my dad worked as a builder here years ago and they took a cast of his face to make one of the heads, that’s him there.’”
Newman’s delivery is as dramatic as you would expect. As the artistic director of Chattyboo Productions, she is naturally entertaining.
Couple that with the many, often outrageous, stories, and the tour quickly turns into a laugh fest.
But it’s not just laughs, the tour is packed with facts and historical nuggets. Newman has a long-time fascination for Cork City and its history.
“Cork has always been this melting pot of culture and food traditions that date back hundreds and hundreds of years. We’re absolutely surrounded and enshrouded in history, and I think that’s what makes Cork so interesting,” she says.
Cork has always been a city of poets, artists, storytellers, and characters, says Newman.
“People who come on the tour love hearing the stories of local legends,” she says.
“There’s my grandfather, for example, he worked in the local post office. At the time, a lot of his neighbours couldn’t read or write. So when he finished work, some of the neighbours would come to the house, and he would fill out forms for them, he would explain what the forms meant, and he would help them out. It was all part of that lovely camaraderie that we still have in Cork. There’s a village mentality here.”
Corkonians have long had a reputation for bucking authority. But Newman tells us that the rebel moniker goes back all the way to 1492 and a male model called Perkin Warbeck.
“In those days, the river ran down Grand Parade, and Warbeck would be seen strutting up and down the quayside as one of the world’s first male models. He was an early ‘influencer’ encouraging people to pop into his employer’s shop where they could get their hands on the fancy silks he was wearing.”
But Warbeck had ideas way above his male modelling job, says Newman. An ill-fated con, where he managed to convince the Cork councillors of the time that he was the Duke of York, the rightful heir to the English throne, saw Warbeck and the councillors sail to England to stage a coup, get captured, and executed. The escapades saw Cork branded “Rebel Cork” by King Henry VII.
As far as Newman is concerned, Cork’s ultimate rebel was Kathy Barry. The so-called Queen of the Coal Quay ran a sibín there in the 1950s and 60s.
“One story I always tell is how Kathy fed medical students for free in her sibín on the condition that they take care of the poor of the area for free. Many people have stories about how she saved their lives.”
It’s clear that, for Newman, the people of Cork are the real story.
“I love the personalities and the banter. It’s evident throughout history and it’s still here today.
“People love that I tell everyday Cork people’s stories as well as the famous stories. The way I see it though, these are stories that are important to remember.”
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