When we saw the name Drawbridge Street, we also spotted a sign over it with the letters F C and the date 1858. We didn’t know what the sign was for but we do now.
Today when the fire brigade want to connect their hose to the water main, they go to a fire hydrant and connect their stand pipe.
The old name for a Fire Hydrant was a Fire Cock.
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Pat Poland wrote in his book ‘For Whom The Bells Tolled’ that the year 1858 was the year the waterworks was commissioned. The waterworks is now called the Lifetime Lab. He said that Sir John Benson was the engineer for the Waterworks and the new watermains that were laid in Cork. Sir John Benson designed the FC 1858 plaques to show the position of the Fire Cocks.
There are still many of them in Cork – we saw lots.
We took a tracing of a Fire Cock in Montenotte which is on the back of our project folder.
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There are also many of the signs that were used after the FC 1858 plaques.
After FC 1858, a small plaque with the letter C in a circle was used.
The next ones said FIRE HYDRANT and were in the shape of a rugby ball.
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The yellow ones came after that. They are yellow with a Black H.
The new yellow ones now have two numbers. The Engineer, Mr Kieran Cronin told us that the top number is the diameter of the water pipe in millimetres. 10 millimetres is 1 centimetre.
The bottom number is the depth of the pipe away from marker.
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In lots of places, we saw two or three of the different plaques together.
So far, we haven’t seen anywhere with all four together but we will keep looking.
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We would love to read what you thought of this chapter and our project.