Future Cork: Our city stretches out a hand of friendship to all — Cónal Creedon
Shandon St, Cork: The practice of living over the shop is returning, breathing new life into well-worn streets.
Statio Bene Fida Carinis — A Safe Harbour for Ships — the motto on the Cork coat of arms underscores our proud maritime heritage while announcing to the world that this is a safe and welcoming city, a city that stretches out a hand of friendship to all.
The fundamental principle of a functioning society is the provision of housing, education, employment, health and safety for its citizens. Beyond those salient responsibilities we are judged by how we interrelate with each other and how we interact with visitors.
Doing Pana is a quintessential Cork phenomenon, best described as a promenade of non-essential but defined purpose. As we meander along Patrick Street we like to maintain an air of mystery.
So, we seldom reveal the nature of our errand, and tend to conceal the precise route of our planned expedition by employing the vague but very specific five points of the Cork Compass : in-along, out-along, down-along, up-along and over-along.
“Going in-along to pick up a few things.” This offers just enough information to thinly veil the true purpose of our perambulation — our desire to engage in random social encounters, fuelled by our deep-seated need to stop and chat.
It came as no surprise in 2023 when international media consortium, Condé Nast declared Cork to be the second friendliest city in Europe. It is a sociable town, and Corkonians love to talk.
Over the centuries our capacity for idle chatter has been refined and elevated to a highly stylised artform. Maybe it’s the sing-song sound of people talking, or our tendency to become animated and engage deeply and meaningfully about nothing at all.
Whatever the reason, going for a scove downtown is like being centre stage in a West End musical. There’s always that sense that the whole street might erupt in song at any given moment. It is precisely this intense but casual social interaction that I love most about downtown living.
We don’t call it the inner city, it’s just plain Downtown. Cork is a bowl-shaped shopping basket centring on an ancient fluvial island, embraced by two channels of the River Lee. Affectionately known as the flat of the city.
This latticework of streets feeds into a warren of winding lanes, interlaced with a filigree of markets and arcades; encased in a rigid corset of quay walls that fan outwards and upwards creating our distinctive cityscape of steps and steeples, more steps and steep hills.
My family has lived and traded in this tightly knit tapestry of streets for over a hundred years. They were the New Cork of the 19th century, arriving into the city from the surrounding countryside, on the coattails of the post Famine generation. They came to set up shop and rear families above their premises.
The facia boards proclaiming proudly their home parish of origin — The Newmarket Dairy, The Ballingeary Stores, the Inchigeela Dairy, The Home Farm Stores, The Iveleary Bar and The Berehaven Bar. It was a neighbourhood of shopkeepers, publicans, butchers, bakers and undertakers, inhabited by a colourful weave of characters, chancers, performers and poseurs.
And so, the street became an extension of the home, creating a magical room outside bustling with children playing, and family, friends and neighbours talking and taking the air. Maybe it was because of the insular nature of the flat of the city, or the steep topography of the hinterland — but public space was scarce downtown; green space was non-existent.
And so, in the absence of designated playgrounds, we youngsters assumed a laisez-faire Freedom of the City — with access all areas, running wild through city streets, goading market traders to give chase was our sport of choice, a veritable Cork-style running of the bulls.
We were the last of the Downtown dirty faces and it was only a matter of time before we surrendered our sovereignty of the streets. The Rubicon was crossed when flesh and bone gave way to rubber and steel and a schoolboy’s skull was crushed beneath the wheels of a truck. Very soon after that the families moved out.
In the wake of the wretched 1980s recession, the winds of change were blowing at gale force, and downtown living seemed in terminal decline. Seduced by the allure of sweet suburbia and the guarantee of safe play areas for children, the families moved en masse to pastures green, and one-by-one the neighbourhood merchants, dealers, hawkers and market traders shut up shop and ceased trading.
Like the ebb and flow of the tide, Downtown is continually in a state of rebirth, rejuvenation and reinvention as each successive generation faces new and unforeseen challenges. Cork has seen war and peace, boom and bust, and on more than one occasion the flat of the city has risen Phoenix-like from the ashes of total annihilation.
Facing adversity, navigating obstacles and rising to the challenge is hot-wired to our DNA. Survival is the lifeblood to the life cycle that fuels the beating-heart of Downtown.
The big wheel of life turns. I take heart as we enter the second decade of this new millennium. Despite the ravages of covid, and the traumatic transition from the analog age to digital age, that saw so many stalwarts of the high street succumb to the new technology and replace their shop counters with an online shop, Downtown is entering a new golden age.
Enticed by the convenience and sociability of downtown living and the proximity to schools and university, young families are choosing to move back into the city centre, breathing new life into well-worn streets. Boarded up shopfronts on my street that had ceased trading decades ago have now reopened.
And like so many generations of traders before them, this recent wave of shopkeepers are the New Cork of the 21st Century, arriving into the city from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, China, Brazil, Italy, Poland and Belarus to set up shop and rear their families.
Once again, the old neighbourhood is alive and trading with shopkeepers, publicans, butchers and bakers — and the street is bustling with families and friends talking and taking the air and that magical sound of children at play and chasing with delight.
I am reluctant to gaze into the crystal ball because the future is never crystal clear. And though I’m entering the final quadrant of life, I sometimes still feel an overpowering urge well up from deep inside the marrow of my bones, to goad some random stall-holder in the hope of a chase through the streets.
Cork for me will forever be an unhurried stroll across Patrick's Bridge looking for pleasure and what else might betide. Doing Pana is the leisure of kings and queens, and there is no pleasure like it in the world.
- On Friday, February 27, the will present 'Future Cork', a flagship event bringing together leaders, innovators, and changemakers to explore the opportunities and challenges that will shape Cork’s next decade. This article is part of the Future Cork series.
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