The English
Market

The English Market has been feeding Cork for over two hundred years. It opened in 1788, built by the Cork Corporation in the city centre, and it has traded every weekday since: through famine, war, fire and recession. The name confused visitors then as it does now. In a city that built its identity on not being English, calling the market English requires some explanation.

The name came from the corporation that built it, the Corporation of Cork, which in 1788 was dominated by Church of Ireland Protestants known locally as the English interest. The Catholic traders of Cork had their own, parallel market outside on the streets. The two eventually merged under the same roof, but the name had already fixed itself.

What you find there

The market is on two levels, connected by a walkway above the lower floor. The lower level, the original 1788 section, runs down toward Princes Street and holds the older trades: the butchers, the fishmongers, the deli counters loaded with local cheese and cured meat. The upper section, added in the nineteenth century, runs between Grand Parade and the lower market.

The Cork specialities are still there. Spiced beef, a dry-cured beef unique to Cork rubbed with spices and slow-cooked, is a year-round staple that the rest of Ireland treats as a Christmas dish and Cork eats whenever. Drisheen is a blood pudding made with sheep's blood, cream and breadcrumbs, and it tastes nothing like the blood puddings found anywhere else in Ireland. Buttered eggs, coated in butter to extend shelf life before refrigeration, are still sold at some stalls.

The 2011 visit

On 20 May 2011, Queen Elizabeth II visited the market during the first state visit by a British monarch to Ireland since partition. It was not on the original schedule. A Palace adviser had seen the market and added it at the last minute. The Queen walked through it, spoke to traders, bought some food, and stopped at a fishmonger's stall. The Queen at a fish counter in Cork, surrounded by traders who looked entirely at ease: the photographs went around the world. For a few days, the English Market was the most famous market in Europe.

The visit was contentious in some quarters of Cork, and the city had a complicated relationship with the occasion. But the market treated it as what it was: a visit from someone interested in the produce. The traders did not change anything for the cameras.

The building

The current market building was rebuilt and expanded through the nineteenth century. The iron pillars supporting the roof are Victorian, and the light that comes through the high windows on a clear day gives the market a quality that no amount of renovation can quite replicate. The covered fountain at the centre of the lower floor has been there in various forms since the early nineteenth century.

It survived the Burning of Cork in 1920. The fire stopped short of the market, and it has been trading continuously since. There are stalls that have been in the same family for four or five generations.

On the walk

We pass the market entrance on Grand Parade and sometimes go in depending on the group. We explain the name, the history, the Cork specialities and the visit that put it on the map in 2011. If you want to explore it properly, it deserves an hour of its own before or after the tour. It opens Monday to Saturday.