Shortly after Seamus Murphy’s dog bowl, we saw the name of the next street. It was a strange name.
A Drawbridge is a bridge that can lift up so that ships can go up the river.
We looked all around. We did not see any bridge or any river. We went to find out more.
In the book ‘Where Bridges Stand’, Mr Antóin O’Callaghan told us that upro 1783 St Patrick’s Street was a river. There was lifty-up bridge from Drawbridge Street over to where Marks & Spensers are now. The steel and timber from the bridge was sold at auction in 1787.
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It only became St Patrick’s Street in 1783. Before that 9 St Patrick’s Street was actually 9 Long Quay.
After learning this, we found that there were many other clues and things to show that St Patrick’s Street and other streets were actually rivers.
The cannon at Le Chateau bar is at the top of steps. The steps were upto the front door of the house . The door on the bottom was for boats.
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There are steps like that on South Mall too. That was also a river.
There is a plaque on the old Provincial Bank of Ireland building by Waterstones saying that the land was reclaimed from the river in the mid-16th century. We never read the plaque until we started this project.
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When we were taking the clay image of the benchmark, we saw an old sign that said Nelson’s Quay. We know that a quay means next to the water but there was no water.
Nelson’s Quay became Warren’s Quay which became Warren’s Place which is now Parnell Place.
In Chapter 11, we write about cannons. We learned that Grand parade was also a river and that the cannon there may have been put in the ground when the river was filled in.
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On our map we have coloured in blue, those streets that we learned were rivers before.
When we met Mr Peter Looney at Elizabeth Fort, he showed us an old map from 1601. We saw that Cork city was nearly all under water except for North and South Main Streets.
It happened to us a lot when we were out looking for things for our project that we spotted and learned other things.
We went to Elizabeth Fort to see the cannons and learned about the river.
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We went to the Crawford Gallery to see sculptures by Seamus Murphy and we saw lots of other things like paintings of Conál Creedon and Gerry Murphy who we had met. These was a painting of Colm Murphy’s mum when she was a baby and paintings of Lord Mayor Terence MacSwiney.
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We even saw an old photograph with a different cannon on Grand Parade.
When we went to Blackpool to see where Tomás MacCurtain was shot, we saw Blackpool Church which Seamus Murphy designed. We also saw the names of two streets that don’t have water anymore – Corkeran’s Quay and Watercourse Road.
There are probably even more that we will see after we finish the project.
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We would love to read what you thought of this chapter and our project.