Pat talks about the Swan and Cygnet pub, Patrick Street, where he used to work. It served a beautiful pint because the barrels were kept in Cork’s first cold storage room. Pubs in the city closed between 2.30 and 3.30 for the holy hour. There was a…
Tom is from Shandon Street. In this interview, he remembers a helicopter landing in a field, sometime in the late 1950s or early 1960s, which caused great excitement amongst the locals.
He mentions the arrival of televisions to Cork around 1963. Tom…
Tony was born and reared in Low Road. He remembers a story about Jack Lynch who had been presented with a Ford Anglia car by the factory. Lynch hated driving and eventually gave it away.
Alice remembers visiting her grandmother in Togher, which was the country, and eating bread and home-made butter. Her grandfather was a farm labourer. The house had an earth floor, and a ceiling made of sewn flour bags. Someone described the house as…
Barry Murphy, originally from Bantry Co. Cork. From 1959 until 1970 Barry lodged in the historic building that later became the home of Cork Civic Trust. He remembers the house and its inhabitants.
The interview explores Noel's memories of working at the Orthopaedic Hospital, nature of work, Sisters in charge, surgeons, theatre work, night shifts, carrying corpses to the mortuary, reflections on working at the hospital, new developments. …
Breda details her earliest memories. She says her family moved to Templeacre when she was 1 or 2. There were not many houses around then. The houses were new and surrounded by lots of fields. The Orthopaedic Hospital was up the road in a field. They…
Breda grew up in Dungarvan Co. Waterford. She moved to Cork in 1975 after getting a job as a clerical worker for the Southern Health Board. Breda moved to Hollyhill in 1980. Six years later she got a transfer to the Orthopedic hospital payroll…
Maura was matron of the Orthopaedic Hospital for 20 years until her retirement in 1997. In this interview Maura recalls the various roles she had in the hospital prior to her being appointed matron.
Maura recalls that the nurses residents on the…
Mary worked in the hospital kitchen for 35 years from 1973.
She describes the type of work that the kitchen staff had to preform, from cooking in the kitchen to scrubbing the walls in the corridors.
Mary says there there would be 7 staff on per…
John, worked at St Mary's Hospital from 1972 to 2003 when he took early retirement. Initially he worked as an orthopaedic register but from 1978 he was consultant.
He remembers thinking St. Mary’s was a very progressive hospital but the layout…
Peter moved to Cork in his early twenties when he had got a job as a typewriter mechanic. The job involved a lot of travel which did not suit him once he got married.
Peter left this job for a position at St Mary's Hospital as a theatre attendant. …
Lorraine grew up on the grounds of the Orthopaedic Hospital. Her father was the Gate Porter. Her father moved into the gate lodge in 1955 and a year later he married and it became the family home till his retirement in 1991.
Lorraine was one of…
Patrick talks about the history of some of the buildings of Cork and about the personal memories associated with them.
He talks about Cork waterworks and being awed as a child by its workings, and about Cork Prison, which he and his parents visited…
Geraldine Healy recounts her personal memories of going to the Everyman Palace Theatre in the late 60s, early 70s. She gives brief accounts of changes to the UCC campus from the mid 70s and early 80s. She mentions brief facts about Collins Barracks,…
Maud explains how she came to study at Crawford School of Art in 1972. She praises her tutors but notes that many of them were fired when a new teaching regime was brought in to support a new Diploma qualification. She says the college had an air of…
Roger talks about the Imperial Hotel, South Mall, formerly the Commercial Buildings and the famous people who attended the hotel.
He explains that South Mall used to be a channel of the River Lee and that is why some buildings on the street have…
Fritz discusses the Unitarian religious tradition, and the Unitarian Church [in Princes Street].
He mentions a number of notable Cork men who were Unitarians. Temperance movement founder Father Mathew had a connection to the building, and slavery…
Geraldine shares her knowledge of the Jewish community in Cork.
She describes how Jews arrived in two distinct waves in the eighteenth century and the nineteenth century, scattering after the Second World War. She describes the Cork synagogue and…