Famine cross returns home after 30 years

A famine cross which vanished from Clonakilty about 30 years ago is to return to its former home on Good Friday.

The 9ft pine cross, which dates from the 1800s, is believed to have stood since famine times in the former Workhouse Chapel, in what is now the town’s Mount Carmel Community Hospital.

However back in the 1980s, the cross was believed to have been moved from its position during large-scale renovations on what was then the County Home, eventually ending up in a builders’ yard in Cork City. “The cross was in the old workhouse chapel. When they were renovating what is now Mount Carmel, a lot of the buildings were knocked down,” says Clonakilty Mayor Phil O’Regan, who led the campaign to bring the cross home.