Making an Irish Free State City – The civic survey and housing challenges

Published in the summer of 1926, Cork, A Civic Survey was an ambitious document giving an insight into an array of topics. The survey outlines that the population of Cork city in 1925 was estimated at about 80,000.

In the housing chapter, the survey maps out very clearly the three dilapidated housing areas of Cork – one west of Shandon Street on the north of the river, the north western corner of the North Main Street area, and the area to the south-west of St Finbarre’s Cathedral. All three, except parts of the northern area, were historic parts of the city.

The survey denoted that that there was not much of dilapidated property in the eastern part of the city centre island to the east of North Main Street. However, the survey still called for the clearance of dwellings that were run down, that no housing rebuilding be under taken in the area, and that the space be re-imagined for shopping and business purposes.

The survey also questioned on whether residential rebuilding should take place in the neighbourhood of Henry Street and Grattan Street. It gave the reason that the land is low-lying and there was ample better land available for the purpose.

The survey makes reference to plenty of building lands in the inner southern suburbs. “One of the satisfactory features, in comparison with most English towns, of this housing plan of Cork is the availability of land on the south of the river for re-housing as well as for city extension. There is no need for re-housing to take place at long distances from existing centres of population.”

In the whole city there were 12,850 houses inhabited by 15,469 families, giving according to the total population about five persons in a family and an average of six persons per house. But a large proportion of the population was crowded into tenements and small houses. The survey records a population of 8,675 comprising 2,928 families living in 719 tenements. Nearly one-ninth of the total population lived in tenements and averaging per house, 12.06.

The Cork survey based its classification methodologies on the condition of tenements and houses on ones developed in a Dublin Civic Survey. There were three classifications: 1st class-houses - which appeared to be structurally sound; they may not be in good repair, but were capable of being put into good repair (in the Cork context, 194 buildings, 839 families, 2,449 persons); 2nd class-houses - which were so decayed, or so badly constructed as to be on, or fast approaching, the border-line of being unfit for human habitation (in the Cork context, 512 tenements, 2,028 families, 6,114 persons); 3rd class-houses unfit for human habitation, and incapable of being rendered fit for human habitation (in the Cork context, 13 tenements, 61 families, 222 persons).

In a classification, houses other than tenements included 1st class, not considered unsatisfactory (in the Cork context, none), second class (in the Cork context, 2,329 houses, 9,649 persons), and 3rd class (in the Cork context 54 houses, 211 persons).

The survey details that if the total tenement population and houses other than tenements are added together, it gave a population of 18,645 living under unsatisfactory conditions. Overcrowding was almost universal in them. Of the 2,383 2nd class houses and 2,265 3rd class houses, they were found overcrowded. In the tenements originally designed for a single family, as many as thirteen families were found living or attempting to live.

Reference is made in the survey to a lecture on public housing given in December 1917 by survey committee member DJ Coakley, principal of the Cork School of Commerce. DJ Coakley painted a stark picture of housing stock in the city.

There was a very large proportion of unsanitary houses as he described “not quite suitable for human beings to live in”. There were several instances of where the father and mother, and sons and daughters over 20 years of age, all slept in the same small apartment.

DJ Coakley spoke about drudgery and breeding places of mental deterioration. “Endless drudgery, such as taking water up four or five flights of stairs uses up all the energy of the mother who has neither time nor strength to give to the care of her children; from these breeding places of mental, moral, and physical deterioration emerge the work-shys and unemployables, born and bred in insanitary slums, with the gutter for a play-ground.”

The survey argues that re-housing upon probably new sites amounted at least involving 16,000 people or one-fifth of the city’s population. The survey makes a case that to rehouse 16,000 people would take many years to complete but should be done as part of a wider town plan.

“This redistribution of so large a proportion of the population will naturally take years to accomplish, though it is to be hoped that the progress will be more rapid than in Liverpool, where it took 30 years to demolish and rebuild a similar number of houses. But one of the chief objects of this survey is to demonstrate that this rebuilding must not be done piecemeal as a series of isolated schemes, however satisfactory, but as part of a general scheme of Town Planning and redistribution of the population.”

In the population and health chapter of the survey, a map is provided, which divides the city into seven districts. The total figures of the death rate from disease for the previous ten years and the average per annum. Typhus, typhoid, scarlatina, diptheria and phthisis cases are detailed.

Higher mortality which is found in those districts which contain the largest amount of insanitary property. Districts 3 and 4, Blarney Street and Shandon Street, showed the highest mortality, both of them on the north of the river. Next came districts 6 and 7, south of the river, namely Western Road-St Finbarr’s Cathedral and the Douglas Street areas, respectively.

To be continued…