People
The Corkonians who left a mark far beyond the city: a founding saint, a temperance priest, a mathematician, an architect and a painter, the Lord Mayors and revolutionaries of 1920, and the emigrants who shook America.
St Fin Barre
The hermit on the lake who founded a monastery in the marsh and gave Cork its name.
Nano Nagle
She ran secret schools by candlelight when teaching Catholics was against the law.
George Boole
The self-taught Corkman whose logic runs every computer, phone and search engine today.
Tomás Mac Curtain
The first Republican Lord Mayor of Cork, shot dead in his home in front of his family.
Terence MacSwiney
Lord Mayor, playwright, hunger striker. He died in Brixton after 74 days. The world watched.
Michael Collins
Cork's most famous son: the man who ran a revolution, killed in an ambush at Béal na Bláth.
Father Mathew
The Apostle of Temperance. He talked half of Ireland off the drink, and his statue still marks Pana.
William Burges
The architect who designed St Fin Barre's down to the door handles, and set a gold angel on its roof.
Daniel Maclise
A Cork shoemaker's son who painted the death of Nelson on the walls of Parliament.
Mother Jones
Born Mary Harris near Shandon, she became the most dangerous woman in America.
Annie Moore
The Cork teenager who, on New Year's Day 1892, became the first immigrant through Ellis Island.
Walk this history
We walk the streets tied to each of these lives and tell you what they did there.
Read more on the people who shaped Cork in The Cork Stories Collection, ten illustrated books for €24.99.