Irish Examiner view: Happy birthday to you, dear Shandon

A much-loved icon of Cork has celebrated its 300th anniversary 

The tower and bells of St Anne's Church, Shandon, are much-loved visual and audible landmarks in Cork City. Picture: Dan Linehan/Irish Examiner Archive

The word “iconic” is frequently over-applied and misused in modern communications to such an extent that it can lose its power. Enter the word into Google and you will generate one trillion one hundred and thirty billion results (1,130,000,000), in 0.71 seconds. 

This looks like a heavily debased currency.

Ask for examples and you will be reminded of the “iconic” picture of Tommy Smith and John Carlos raising their black-gloved fists during the 1968 Olympics medal ceremony; the Tour de France’s yellow jersey is similarly “iconic” as is the Edward Hopper painting, Nighthawks. Thelma and Louise is an “iconic” feminist road movie while the Ford Taurus is one of the automotive industry’s “truly iconic brands”. 

It seems to us that one of the qualifications for achieving icon status is longevity; another is unique quality; yet a third is accessibility. It is something we must all be able to see. 

And a fourth is its influence upon our lives.

Tom Holmes and Michael O'Sullivan gilding the 'Goldie Fish' which serves as a weather vane atop Cork's Shandon Steeple in August 1959. Picture: Irish Examiner Archive

By any definition, St Anne’s Church in Shandon fulfils those criteria and well merits its 300th birthday celebration in Cork City yesterday. 

Its clock tower, famous for telling a different time on each of its faces, led to it being nicknamed affectionately by Corkonians as “the four-faced liar”. 

Even now some mystery attaches to the church, which houses the distinctive Shandon Bells, because its parish records were destroyed in the public records office fire of 1922 causing uncertainty about the exact date it was built and consecrated.

Visitors can climb past the clock mechanism to the top of Shandon tower for a 360-degree panorama of Cork City, and can also play the famous bells. Picture: Dan Linehan

Paul Colton, the Bishop of Cork, Cloyne, and Ross, has appealed to local people, parishioners, historians, and archivists to help him fill in the gaps.

“We have checked dates on parish silver, on plaques, and on the font in the Church. There appears to be no foundation stone and no memorial stone commemorating the consecration,” he said.

A special anniversary mass was held yesterday on a site which has been a place of worship since before medieval times. 

St Anne’s was built to replace a previous church, St Mary’s, which was destroyed in the Siege of Cork in 1690. 

Shandon plays host to many traditions including the Cork International Choral Festival dawn chorus where a choir — such as Voci Nuove in 2013 — sings the city awake from the tower at sunrise. File picture: Clare Keogh

The 120ft tower was raised in 1750 and has another icon, the gold weathervane — symbolic of the salmon fishing industry which was once of huge importance. 

“De goldie fish” and the “four-faced liar” — two questions you can ask to find out how well someone knows the city.

• See ShandonBells.ie to learn more and to plan your visit to St Anne's, Shandon.