Noreen Hannover: South Main Street

Noreen Hannover: South Main Street

South Main Street and North Main Street

Noreen Hanover was born in 1950 and grew up in the South Main Street area until 1975. Her family would have done most of their shopping on South Main Street and she relates the character of the shops there, their different purposes, as well as what hasn’t changed in the time since she lived there.


Noreen Hanover was born in 1950 and lived around Nicholas Church Place on the Southside of Cork until 1975. In this interview, she discusses the character and use of South Main Street, focusing a great deal on the types of shops that would have been present during her time there. She states that she would have been sent, as a child, to buy ‘loose’ ingredients for her mother – sugar, milk, a few eggs, etc. – and relates that she might have picked up an apple or an orange while shopping as well. She relates that she and a friend of hers used to go and look in the windows of the toy shops, near Christmas time, but that they would never have asked for anything in particular. Shops she lists as being largely the same or still in their old locations are The Enterprise (which was a pub and is now also a restaurant), the Brown Derby, and Twomey’s (on Barrack Street). When prompted, she describes what she defines as the beginning of South Main Street (beginning with the Washington Street junction) and where North Main Street would have started. She relates that going by bus to the Northside was a special treat as they would only rarely have been able to afford bus fare. Noreen also describes various shops that would have been on South Main Street: large department stores for men, bargain stores where they would have gotten free shoes as part of social welfare, spinsters running newspaper and comic shops, and Kilgrew’s toy shop. She mentions specifically that Patrick Street would have been an area for richer people to shop. Lastly, she discusses that before TV, which would have been introduced when she was approximately 11 or 12, her mother used to tell stories, many of which related to the local character and shops of South Main Street and the South Side of Cork.

08 January 2015

CFP_SR00537_hanover_2015

Cork; Ireland; 1950s - 2000s;

CFP_SR00536_oleary_2015; CFP_SR00537_hanover_2015; CFP_SR00538_spalding_2015; CFP_SR00539_hUigin_2015; CFP_SR00543_obrien_2015; CFP_SR00544_comber_2015; CFP_SR00545_leader_2015; CFP_SR00546_creedon_2015;

Cork Folklore Project Audio Archive

Cork Folklore Project

English

Sound

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31 mins 38 secs

Ballyvolane, Cork

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24bit / 48kHz

The following is a short extract from the interview transcript, copyright of the Cork Folklore Project. If you wish to access further archival material please contact CFP, folklorearchive@gmail.com

MS: It might sound like kind of a stupid question now, but people actually give different answers. For you, where would the South Main Street start?

NH : Yeah, the South Main Street for me funnily enough now, myself and my sister now were talking about that the other day and to me the South Main Street started at Washington Street. You know the junction of Washington Street? And from that back up to the top of Barrack Street was the South and as you crossed the lights, I can’t even remember if there were lights there at the time, the junction there and from that down then was the North Main Street. I don’t know if I’m right or wrong like but that’s, that’s what I would have thought of like, ‘cause you went down as far there. You know, you might kind of, that there’d be shops down ‘long there now, the way you’d kind of would have advanced and you kinda got maybe some lino, or some wallpaper like that, there’d be a newer shop down there and we’d say go down to the end of the South Main Street. You know where, the locality would be where we were living. I was living around by am, Nicholas Church Place , where the, the old Nicholas Church Church is and so like there in the locality there was loads of shops for when you needed to do something bigger, she could have advanced a bit more. We would go to the North Main Street and that’d be a grand day to us there like to kind of go up to the North ‘cause we’ve cousins in the Northside we could meet them, you know that kinda thing like so.

Audio