Phil Corcoran: The Low Road, Slogging Apples, Chocolate Crumb

COC: So what we’re doing is we’re going to, you saw the map inside, we’re going to put a version of it online. So, when you go online you can click on a certain point in the map and hear somebody, like you know some of the voices that we had playing.

PC: Yeah, because I knew Geraldine from, I say, I used to work in Wilton and Geraldine used to come in for her cup of coffee.

COC: Oh, very good.

PC: And then, where the Butter Exchange is now used to be a hat factory a long, long time ago. It was O’Gorman’s Hat Factory. And my mother’s mother worked up there. But my grand-father, which would be my mother’s father, was a docker below in the quay but his mother used to sell second hand clothes in the Coal Quay.

COC: And can you describe her to me?

PC: Well, well I mean since they were all heavy I could get one or two pictures, I’d say off my uncle and well it wasn’t like – my mother had curly hair and good looking. They used to say when – well my grand-mother used to say about her mother in law, she had an old coat or an old apron and the black shawl but she was taking all the coins and notes and they’d be going home at night they’d be [phrase unintelligible] straighten them out. But my grandmother’s father then was a docker below in the quay. That time then there was no [word unintelligible] for dockers below in the quay. Ands my grandfather, on my father’s side, worked for C.I.E. in the railway but his wife’s grandmother was from Chapelizod in Dublin you see. So they all came like, twas basically work with docks, C.I.E. and the whole lot like. My husband then is originally from Shandon Street.

COC: And where did you grow up yourself?

PC: I grew up in the Low Road, em just below Water Street and we used to come up to get the chocolate crumb off the boats and the bananas. We used to get killed. [Laughter]

COC: And would you go in, go in up the quays looking for it?

PC: Go up the quay waiting for the chocolate crumb boat to come up and sure of course there was no sweets or you couldn’t afford sweets that time like. We’d get the chocolate crumb and you’d get the bananas and of course the bananas would be as green as grass and you’d have to wrap them in brown paper; put it in cupboards instead like right. Half the time I remember going down then where Silversprings now is. That used to be called Dwyer’s Wood and there was a lot of big houses that time like I mean to say. These were big houses now, they had maids and cleaners and they were big four, five storey houses. But one day we decided we’d go in slogging apples. Of course I caught on the fence coming over. I had two lovely spike marks, sure I got killed when I went up home.

COC: And does Kyle, does your grandson know what slogging apples is?

PC: You see, this is it, not the kids.

COC: You should explain it. Explain it to him now.

PC: You see when you go out, you now like, she has an apple tree next door but you see that time we had no money. So we’d be sent off in the morning maybe a bread and jam sandwich and a bottle of milk and you’d be doing – go off for the day because that was – Dwyer’s Wood at the end of Silversprings, where the hotel is there now. We used to be big fools in fields and you’d be throwing off down then playing rounders and whatever was going for the day. And then, well on the way back you’d be feeling hungry and we’d go in and we’d rob apples. That’s what called slogging apples is.

[Interrupted by grandson in interview]

PC: He was saying what was that building behind the Maldron hotel. But that was the old North Infirmary.

COC: Yes. Yeah.

PC: I must say my father in law was a patient in there. And I mean to say like where you come out the back now where they have the car park you can see Shandon. And it took me to have a look at Shandon today and then out to the Skiddy’s Alms Houses. Because like you’d often see them and they’d be – I’m sure it’s a Cork Channel, it’s to do with the heritage above in Farrannree or something and they had a documentary about Skiddy’s Alms Houses and then of course I brought him out to see them and then I had to bring him down, Bobba Jones’ as we used to call it long ago. And there.

COC: And tell me, when you were young growing up. What kind of games would you play?

PC: Oh we’d have kick the can. You see I grew up in the Low Road. It’s like rounders and we used to have hide and seek and then we would play skipping and two balls and then with the roller skates, the old fashioned roller skates with the big rubber wheels. Sure we used to have a great time with them. We were grand didn’t we had no elbow pads or no knee pads. I often fell.

COC: And eh, did you ever have bonfires on bonfire night?

PC: I did, got rid of all the rubbish and tyres and big black smoke and you’d have the sausages on stick cooking on the bonfire.

COC; And where would your bonfire be?

PC: We had – there was a big quarry on the Low road. If you go along the train now to Cobh you actually had to pass through the quarry and we used to have great times down there because it – there was men, Mr. Googan [?], the Lord have mercy o him. His daughters were in school with me but he was a taxi driver and that time like taxi drivers, I’m going back now fifty five, so like I’m going back to then. And like having someone [phrase unintelligible] as a taxi driver oh that was a great thing. You were very wealthy, very well to do like. And eh we used to go in there in under the railway bridge play in the quarry and there was the eh, a little stream because you see Spring Lane as we used to call it – Silversprings was a fresh water spring and it used to run down Silversprings, the whole length of Silversprings and you could walk up Spring Lane from there, up to the top of Mayfield and you’d come out then by the Cotton Ball.

COC: Yeah, yeah.

PC: So, of course we used to have the fresh water and we had an old pond then below the porridge [?] we’d be in there swimming. That was our swimming pool. Or we’d go down, well tis’ a park now, tis the Cork Harbour Park in the Low Road, but that was Tivoli Scheme long ago and sure tis’ in there I learned how to swim.

COC: Oh right.

PC: And my grandmother, she could never swim but she used to row the ferryboat by the ferryboat inn, over long ago to the matches in Pairc Uí Chaoimh now but it was the Showgrounds that time – or over to the athletic grounds. And her brother, Georgie Garrett, was on the same team as Christy Ring; and he won an All-Ireland.

COC: Oh wow.

PC: And, like, things like that – I mean tis’ it’s. [Interrupted]

COC: And, your grandmother now, she’d, she’d go over as a passenger, was it, in the row boat.

PC: No she used to row the boys over in the ferry boat ‘cause she used to – she won a bracelet years ago and it would have been, kind of the equivalent of an Olympic medal ‘cause she rowed with Lee Rowing Club.

COC: Wow.

PC: They used to do the ‘em—there used to be [phrase unintelligible] and they used to be up and down the river like and she could never swim, but she used to row them. So like that’s where we learned how to swim. We used to go backwards and forwards.

COC; Wow.

PC: My uncle threw me in, I was about six down in Tivoli Scheme. And I had to learn how to swim.

COC: I tell ya, in at the deep end that is.

PC: Oh by god you learned how to swim.

COC: And what was the Tivoli Scheme? What was it?

PC: It was – there was all oil factories that time, the Esso Oil Factory, and then there was em – they used to do a roofing product called Roof Broom. There were a multi-national company.

COC: And were you swimming in the river there?

PC: Yeah.

COC: Yeah, yeah.

PC: Swimming in the River Lee, going out to sea.

[Interrupted by Grandson]

PC: But I remember the synagogue that time for the Jews in Cork, it was over in the Lee Terrace by the old Labour Exchange, where the Lee Garage is now, that’s where the old synagogue was. It’s just like when you be walking around –because Patrick Street is changed so much, Roches’ Stores is it used to be Roches’ Stores then above that, down where Merchant’s Quay – they were on actually -- Neil Prendeville out it on the other day about pubs, old pubs around Cork. There was the Queen’s, there was The Inisfallon along the other side by the back of the Metropole. There were so many old pubs – The Long Valley is – what’s the oldest, The Chateaux. They’re about the only two – The Swan and Cygnet, where Blacktie is there now, used to be the Song and Cygnet. But I mean to say like the – even Cork to the Cork I grew up in like it’s changed so much.

COC: I’d say so.

PC: I mean to say where Burgerking is there now, that used to be Lipton’s fruit shop long ago, eh where Guiney’s was, was the five star supermarket. And in the old Roches’ Stores there was a laneway going between them and the old coffee shop and down there; there was a friend of mine used to work there, Jack Lyons’ tobacco shop, and they used to mix all of his tobacco for the pipe smokers. And then you had the Tivoli where the entrance, I suppose you could call it down to Marks and Spencers was a fabulous public restaurant. And across from that, now I even say the last day we used to love eh there used to be a greasy spoon I suppose you call it, the Uptown Grill on MacCurtain Street. Sure that’s gone now as well like. Change of faces.

COC: So listen, thanks very much.

[End of Interview]