Eclectic mix of artefacts is Pure Cork

THE title says it all: Pure Cork, suggesting something inherent to the city by the Lee, immediately understood by Corkonians, like a secret passed on from generation to generation.

Historian Michael Lenihan, a connoisseur of yesteryear, has been letting that secret out over the past few years with various books on his native city, mostly notably “Hidden Cork”, which was published last year.

“Pure Cork” is his latest offering, representing the culmination of 40 years collecting and collating an extraordinary array of photographs, sketches and memorabilia, most of which have rarely seen the light of day before.

From the Edwardian grandeur of the Cork International Exhibition of 1902, to Leeside’s 9-11 — the destruction of the city by the Black and Tans in 1920 — and its subsequent rebirth, this cavalcade of advertisements, maps, sketches, postcards and photographs offers a unique perspective on Cork and visually traces its development and evolution over the past 200 years. It is an eclectic — occasionally eccentric — collection that took years to amass.

Lenihan’s first foray into collecting began almost by accident when he was 13 years of age and needed to make some pocket money. He discovered a benefactor in the form of Malcolm Moss, a coin and stamp dealer who ran a business in Frenche’s Quay and paid youngsters to extract stamps from envelopes. “He paid two shillings and sixpence for soaking 1,000 stamps from pieces of envelopes and drying them on newspapers,” says Michael. “I handed him 2,000 stamps and was paid the princely sum of five shillings for my efforts. But I could not leave the shop without spending my loot on 12 black and white Cork postcards.”

Forty odd years later, he has amassed a veritable Munro of material, only a fraction of which is reproduced here. Cork’s maritime heritage is well represented, uniquely so in the form of sketches taken from rare illustrated guidebooks printed in London in the 1870s.

The graceful masts of the sailing ships look like dainty filigree, echoing the ornate church spires as they rise from the murky River Lee, bringing to mind the contemporary grandeur of the tall ships that sailed into town in 1991.

Cork as a trading city is also evident, from its muscular heavy industries like Ford’s and Dunlop’s to the local tea and coffee merchants, and not forgetting the formidable Shawlies on Corkmarket Street, who plied their trade out of doors.

Advertising posters, cards and signs often displayed the Cork coat of arms, though there appears to have been some disagreement on how to special the city’s motto. In “Statio Bene Fida Carinas” (for anchorage there is no safer harbour), the word “Fida” is occasionally spelt “Fide”.

Elsewhere, Lenihan offers his own unique spelling of Cork’s Anglican cathedral, Saint Fin Barre’s, referring to it throughout as St Finbarre’s. The chapter on Cork city churches is particularly revealing and the “mockey-a” glass lantern image of Shandon at night shows the triumph of technology over reality.

Lacking only a full index of materials, this collection is a salute to the value of hoarding and offers a fresh insight into how the past shapes the present and guides the future. Michael Lenihan has put his heart as well as his mind into the project.

Like his book, he is “pure Cork.”

* Pure Cork is published by Mercier Press, €25 or €22.50 online.