Cork Walking Tour · Free Book
Every walk comes with a free Cork history book
Book the Cork City Walking Tour and choose a book to take home. Ten illustrated histories of the city, and you pick the one you want, free, after the walk.
All ten books. The story of Cork.
The walk is €25. Each book sells for €12.99 in the shop. Every guest on the walk chooses one to keep, so the book comes with your ticket at no extra cost.
How the free book works
- 1Book any departure. The Cork City Walking Tour runs every Saturday and Sunday at 10:00 and 13:30, from The Counting House on South Main Street.
- 2Take the walk. Seventy-five to ninety minutes through the old heart of the city with a local guide, from Shandon and the English Market to St Fin Barre's and the Grand Parade.
- 3Choose your book. At the end your guide gives you the code that unlocks it. Pick any of the ten titles and download it.
The book is a gift to every guest on the walk. You get it for turning up, not for leaving a review.
Choose from ten Cork history books
Each book tells the city through real people and specific places rather than a list of dates. Every title runs 80 to 100 illustrated pages and downloads as a PDF. They read in any order, so pick the one that caught you on the walk.
Ancient Cork
Cork before the city. The stone circles, the holy wells, the old gods, and Finbarr's monastery on the marsh.
Blarney Castle
The castle's full story and the Gaelic Munster around it, from the MacCarthy lords to the Battle of Kinsale in 1601.
Merchant Cork
How Cork made its money. The butter roads, the salt beef that fed the Navy, and the merchant families of the South Mall.
The Great Hunger
The Famine inside the city and county, from the workhouse and the food that kept leaving the ports to Skibbereen.
Leaving Cork
The great leaving through Cork Harbour, with Annie Moore at Ellis Island and a chapter on tracing your Cork ancestors.
The Fenians
Cork republicanism through the 1800s, told through O'Donovan Rossa, the Irish People arrests, and the rising of 1867.
Rebel Cork
Mac Curtain and MacSwiney, Tom Barry and the flying column, the Burning of Cork, and Michael Collins.
Stout and Whiskey
Murphy's and Beamish, the distilleries, Cork gin and Tanora, and Father Mathew's war on the drink.
Cork and the Modern World
How a small city shaped the modern world, from Boole's logic to Ford's Marina plant and Apple at Hollyhill.
Women of the Rebellion
From Nano Nagle's hidden schools under the Penal Laws to the women of Cumann na mBan and the hunger strikes of 1923.
Not walking yet?
You can read all 36 Cork history stories free at Cork History. The full books live in the shop at €12.99 each, and the collection of all ten sells for €45.
Walk it, then read it
Shandon, the English Market, City Hall and St Fin Barre's are all stops on the Cork City Walking Tour. Book a Saturday or Sunday walk, and choose the book that carries the story home.