Cork; Tuesday, 13 August, 2002

Tuesday was my day for doing Cork.

The city itself is not full of tourist attractions. It has a large number of churches that would keep a churchaholic happy for a couple of weeks but there are only two worth visiting if you have limited time. In addition to that there are not many museums and in the end only spending one day in Cork there was only two attractions that I did not see, the Crawford Art Gallery and the Cork city museum. In addition a tour of the Beamish Crawford brewery would have been interesting but the site was closed for repairs at the time.

First on the itinerary for the day was the Guide Friday tour of the city. This takes you round the whole of the city centre and out to the city Gaol which was my first stop.

The Gaol, which closed to prisoners in 1923 has an interesting audio guided exhibition on the prisons use and the conditions it's inmates were kept in. After it was a prison it had another life as the headquarters of RTE (the state broadcaster) in Cork and from it's walls the first radio broadcasts in the city were transmitted. There is a museum to RTE radio and the role the Gaol played in it in addition to the Gaol museum.

Next stop, about 3/4 of a mile back down the hill is St. Ann's Shandon and it's bells. This imposing church is made of the two types of stone found in Cork and two sides of the building are in the Red of the Sandstone and the other two sides in the grey of the Limestone. In addition to being a striking building you can also climb the tower (red rag to a bull for me) and part way up ring the famous Shandon bells.

Next stop about 50 yards away is the butter museum but before I popped in there I had a wonderful lunch in the little cafe at the front of the Shandon Craft Centre.

The butter museum is in the site of the former butter market. Cork was the centre of a highly lucrative and important butter industry. The small museum ends with a video presentation on the importance and quality of Irish butter and is in no way a marketing campaign by Kerrygold the Irish state dairy products company!.

After that I wandered over to look at St. Fin Barrs Cathedral which is an interesting (if not slightly brutal looking) cathedral.

From there I went to the Cork vision centre. Set in a old disused church this exhibition centre includes a scale model of the whole of the Lee valley from before it reaches Cork, through the city and out to the sea to Cobh. The centre also has a video presentation on the history and development of Cork.

That evening I went on a very interesting literary tour of Cork that walks round the centre of the city pointing out it's literary connections and ends with a pint of Beamish in a pub opposite the brewery.