Making an Irish Free State City – Via Cork Public Museum, 1945

Continuing from last week, the 1945 souvenir brochure for the Cork Public Museum makes for interesting reading as it not only contains a guide to artefacts in the re-opened museum, but also their local historical context and the foci of the overseeing Museum Committee.

Floor one of the newly opened Cork Public Museum in 1945 held the principal five exhibition rooms.

At the entrance to the main archaeological exhibits at room 1 and on the wall above case no.1 was a small map of Cork Harbour showed the locations of all the known shell-midden sites in the Cork district.

Two of the sites lay actually within the city area itself. One of them was discovered many years ago when the Cork School of Art was being built in 1850 (now the site of the Crawford Art Gallery), and the other one when the foundations of the new St Augustine’s Church were being laid down in the early 1940s.

Human activity at shell midden sites were marked by great mounds of oyster and other shells. On the shells there were indications that they had been deliberately forced open by human activity. Shell openers or flat pebbles with suitably sharp edges were found nearby.

None of the Cork shell middens had produced any evidence, which could be used to date them with certainty, but from evidence obtained elsewhere the date of 5,000BC was pitched.

Case no.1 showed a selection of implements from the Stone Age.

Above case no. 2 was a drawing, based on the excavation, carried on by Professor Seán P. Ó Riordáin at Lough Gur, County Limerick, of what he classified as a ‘Stone Age village community’.

Case no.3 contained a scale model of one of the houses of the Lough Gur village and showed the processes of constructing a dwelling, while above it, a drawing showed an internal arrangement.

Case no.4 contained an exhibit which was designed to show the kind of clothing worn at the end of the Stone Age and during the succeeding Bronze Age (2,000BC). The garments on display were exact copies of clothing actually discovered by archaeological excavation in Germany, where the soil conditions on certain sites were such that even highly perishable organic material were preserved.

Above case no. 9 was an exhibit of considerable interest. Some years previously when a roadway near Blackrock was being widened, the three horns displayed were unearthed.

The souvenir booklet noted: “The horns belonged to a warriors helmet and date to about AD300. They are of bronze. Such horns were fully mounted on bronze helmets, but our Cork specimens were probably secured to a leather head-dress. At any rate, no trace of a bronze helmet was found, and the appearance of the rivets of the bases of the cones rather suggests attachment to leather. The horns are hollow and are made from plates of the metal beaten to this shape. Where the edges meet they were joined together by minute copper rivets. The points of the horns are closed by means of bronze ferrules of rounded forms, while the bases are decorated with Celtic pattern of flowing curves. The helmet upon, which they are now mounted is a conjectural model at the original.”

From rooms two to five, an attempt was made to illustrate in general terms events in Cork history from the early Christian times to the Irish War of Independence.

From early Christian times, a nod was given in the respective cabinets to the research of Canon Lyons and Canon O’Mahony, and to Professor Ó Riordáin's excavation of an earthen fort at Garranes, near Bandon. The objects in case no.10 came from the fort. On the right of the case, a map showed the location of the fort. Case no.11 contained a conjectural model of Rath Raithleann, re-imagined from the evidence obtained by the excavations.

The souvenir booklet also outlines that the structure called Rath Raithleann had been identified as the royal seat of a people known in history as the Uí Eachach Mumhan, the sept from which the O’Mahonys were descended.

The booklet links to one of the lives of St Finbarr: “About AD 560 this people had as king Tighearnach, during whose reign Amharyein. St Finnbarr's father was chiel metalworker to the sept. Excavation showed that those who occupied the fort spent them time in making bronze and glass ornaments of many kinds, and in this work the craftsmen showed considerable ability and a very high level of artiste skill. It may be taken for granted that many of the beautiful objects here displayed were made by the saint’s father during his lifetime of service to his royal master at Raithleann.”

With regard to the Viking era the display included a map showing the sea-lanes followed by the Viking raiders in their wanderings. Adjacent to the map were drawings of the hilts of some Viking swords found in Ireland. All of them were of iron inlaid with silver and gold. The iron portion between the pommel and cross-piece was originally covered with some material, now decayed, which gave a good handgrip.

The cross-piece of one bears the name of its owner Hartolfr. Case no. 12 contained three typical silver bracelets of Viking date and origin, also found in Ireland. In addition a selection of photographs of actual Viking ships were excavated in Scandinavia where the rite of a ship-burial was practiced.

Showcasing medieval Cork, the town walls were highlighted through the display of a 1545 map of the town was on view. This map, which is the earliest known one of Cork, was followed by a complete sequence of maps made at different dates showing the gradual development of the city up to the middle of the nineteenth century. On the pillars in this room was also a series of views of the old walled town showing the South and North Gate drawbridges and the gate key of the latter.

Another view showed the old early eighteenth century constructed Exchange building in Castle Street. In this market, or in an earlier one, was the Nail, which was a bronze topped pedestal standing in the central arch leading from the landing.

This object was used as a sort of deck by the supervisor of the market, and on which all payments between buyers and sellers were made and hence the act of “paying on the nail”.