Cork History · Rebel Cork

Rebel Cork: the War of Independence sites you can walk today

In one year, 1920, Cork buried two Lord Mayors and lost its city centre to fire. The places where it happened sit within a short, flat walk of one another. This guide brings you to each site and links the full story behind it.

The city-centre sites

1. Cork City Hall, Albert Quay. British forces burned the original hall on the night of 11 December 1920, and the Carnegie Library next door went with it, taking centuries of the city's written records. The British government later paid for the rebuild as a gesture of reconciliation, and Éamon de Valera opened the new limestone hall in 1936. Terence MacSwiney was arrested inside the old building in August 1920. Read the full story: Cork City Hall.
2. St Patrick's Street. On the same December night, Black and Tans and Auxiliaries moved through Cork's main shopping street with petrol and incendiaries. They cut fire hoses and turned firemen back at gunpoint. The damage ran to £2–3 million and around 300 families lost their homes. The street you walk today is largely the 1920s rebuild, younger than it looks. Read: The Burning of Cork and St Patrick's Street.
3. The National Monument, Grand Parade. Unveiled on St Patrick's Day 1906, paid for by ordinary Corkonians through public subscription. A mourning figure of Ireland stands over four rebels from four failed risings: Wolfe Tone and Michael Dwyer of 1798, Thomas Davis of 1848, and the Cork Fenian Peter O'Neill Crowley of 1867. The city built it fourteen years before its own generation rose. Read: The National Monument.

The two Lord Mayors of 1920

Tomás Mac Curtain became Cork's first Republican Lord Mayor in January 1920. On the night of 19 March, men shot him dead in his home in front of his wife and children. The coroner's inquest returned a verdict of wilful murder against the British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, and the Royal Irish Constabulary. Read: Tomás Mac Curtain.

Terence MacSwiney, his friend and comrade, took the office in April. Arrested at City Hall in August, he began a hunger strike the day of his arrest and died in Brixton Prison, London, on 25 October 1920, after 74 days. It remains one of the longest hunger strikes on record, and the world's press followed every day of it. His line travelled furthest: "It is not those who can inflict the most, but those who can endure the most who will conquer." Read: Terence MacSwiney.

Statues of both men stand at City Hall.

Beyond the city

Two West Cork sites frame the city's story. At Kilmichael, on 28 November 1920, Tom Barry's IRA flying column killed seventeen Auxiliaries; the burning of Cork thirteen days later came as the reprisal. At Béal na Bláth, on 22 August 1922, Michael Collins died in an ambush during the Civil War, in the county where he was born. Read: Michael Collins.

Why "Rebel Cork" at all?

The name is five centuries older than 1920. Cork backed a pretender to the English throne in 1491, and the Crown hanged the city's mayor for it. The full story is here: Why is Cork called the Rebel City?

Walk it

City Hall, the Grand Parade and the National Monument are stops on the Cork City Walking Tour, a 75 to 90 minute guided walk that ties the city's history and science into one story. Tours run every Saturday and Sunday at 10:00 and 13:30, from The Counting House on South Main Street.

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