Cork Heritage Open Day 2025

Another Cork heritage open day is looming. The 2025 event will take place on Saturday 16 August. For one day only, over 40 buildings open their doors free of charge for this special event. Members of the public are allowed a glimpse of some of Cork's most fascinating buildings ranging from the medieval to the military, the civic to the commercial and the educational to the ecclesiastical.

This event was greeted with great enthusiasm by building owners and members of the public alike in 2024 with an estimated 23,000 people participating on the day.

It is always a great opportunity to explore behind some of Cork’s grandest buildings. With the past of a port city, Cork architecture has a personality that varied and much is hidden amongst the city’s narrow streets and laneways.

It is a photogenic city, which lights up with sunshine as it hits the limestone buildings. Much of its architecture is also inspired by international styles – the British style of artwork and nineteenth century brick pervading in most cases– but it’s always pays to look up in Cork and marvel at the Amsterdamesque-style of our eighteenth century structures on streets such as Oliver Plunkett Street or at the gorgeous tall spires of the city’s nineteenth-century churches.

Cork Heritage Open Day is twenty years in the making and with 40 buildings it is almost impossible to visit them all in one day. It takes a few goes to get to them all and spend time appreciating their physical presence in our city but also the often hidden context of why such buildings and their communities came together and their contribution to the modern day picture of the city.

The team behind the Open Day, Cork City Council, do group the buildings into general themes, Steps and Steeples, Customs and Commerce, Medieval to Modern, Saints and Scholars and Life and Learning – one can walk the five trails to discover a number of buildings within these general themes.

These themes remind the participant to remember how our city spreads from the marsh to the undulating hills surrounding it, how layered and storied the city’s past is, how the city has been blessed to have many scholars contributing to its development in a variety of ways and how the way of life in Cork is intertwined with a strong sense of place and ambition. For a small city, it packs a punch in its approaches to national and international interests.

For example, the trail the Ecclesiastical Buildings trail is a very apt way to discover some of the city’s richer architectural features.

Check out the Cork Baptist Church on MacCurtain Street, St Anne’s Church, Shandon, and the Quakers Meeting House and graveyard on Summerhill South and St Finbarre’s Cathedral.

The Quaker religion was first brought to Cork in 1655 by two young Quaker women, Elizabeth Fletcher and Elizabeth Smith. The new Quaker community purchased land to use as a burial ground at Summerhill South. The first internment was in 1668, and this burial ground is still in use today. All the gravestones have the same shape, size and lettering, as a testimony to the Quaker belief that all have “that of God” within and so are intrinsically equal.

The original Quaker meeting house was built on Grattan Street in 1678 and was expanded and rebuilt over the years until it attained its current form in 1834, when there were several hundred Quakers in Cork.

Due to a declining Quaker population over the next hundred years, the Grattan Street Meeting House was sold and a new, smaller meeting house was built in 1938 near the 17th century Summerhill South burial ground.

The number of Quakers in Cork began growing again in the 1980s, and there are now about 160 people in the Cork Quaker community. The 1938 meeting house has recently been renovated and extended, particularly aiming to ensure the space is accessible to all and is as sustainable and energy efficient as possible.

One of Cork’s most distinctive landmarks, St Finbarre’s Cathedral, is located where Cork’s patron saint founded his first church and school. It is the diocesan cathedral of the Church of Ireland and the bishop’s residence is directly opposite the cathedral gate.

St Finbarre’s was designed by the notable architect William Burges, who also designed the stained glass, the sculptures, the mosaics, the furniture and metal work for the interior.

The foundation stone was laid in 1865 and the building was consecrated in 1870. The cathedral is stylistically late 13th century pointed Gothic and is cruciform in shape. It has triple spires with portals to the west front and an abundance of external stone carved detail. Cork limestone and marbles were used throughout the building.

Interesting features include the high columns of the nave made of Bath stone. The walls are lined internally with Cork red marble. The iconographic scheme deals with the journey to the new Jerusalem and some of the best stained glass in Ireland show scenes from the Old and New Testaments.

The organ, dating from 1889, is placed in the north transept. It is the largest cathedral organ in Ireland and the only one in a pit in Britain or Ireland. There is a cannon ball dating from the siege of Cork, 1690 and there are over 1,200 carvings.

The cathedral is of major international significance as one of the key buildings of Burges and of nineteenth century architecture in Ireland.

See www.corkheritageopenday.ie for more information on the city’s great Heritage Open Day and then the day is followed by National Heritage Week.