St Patrick's Street

St Patrick's Street curves through the middle of Cork for a reason most visitors never guess. It follows the bend of a channel of the River Lee. Until the 1780s, boats tied up where shoppers now walk. The city arched the channel over and paved it, and the quay became a street. Corkonians call it Pana, and walking it end to end is still called doing Pana.

A street built on water

Cork grew up on a cluster of marshy islands in the Lee, threaded by tidal channels. St Patrick's Street is one of those channels, covered and paved. The buried river gives the street its gentle curve and its generous width, which is why the city's main thoroughfare runs as a long bow rather than a straight line. Bridges still cross the Lee at either end, a reminder that you walk on top of the water trade that made Cork rich.

For two centuries the street has been where Cork shows itself off. Merchants who grew rich on butter and provisions built tall premises along it, and the finest shops in Munster traded behind their windows. Trams once ran its length, and the wide pavements were made for parading as much as for buying. The street keeps that double life today. It is the busiest run of shops in the city and also its stage, the place a protest sets out from, a winning team is welcomed home to, and a crowd gathers on when something matters. The curve hides the far end as you walk, so Pana always seems to promise a little more around the bend.

The night the street burned

The worst night in the street's history came on 11 December 1920. During the War of Independence, British forces set fire to building after building along the southern side in reprisal for an IRA ambush. The flames spread fast. By morning much of St Patrick's Street was gone, along with City Hall and the Carnegie Library. Then Cork did something quieter and just as telling. It rebuilt. Within seven years the burned blocks stood again, in the confident commercial style you pass today.

The Statue, and doing Pana

At the head of the street stands the figure Corkonians simply call the Statue. It is Father Theobald Mathew, the temperance priest, unveiled in 1864 and pointing down Pana ever since. Generations met here, walked the street to be seen, then met here again. The shops change and the chains come and go, but the habit of doing Pana is older than any of them.

On the walk

We walk the length of Pana and read the street like a map of the city's luck: the buried river under the curve, the Statue at its head, and the rebuilt blocks that mark where the fire of 1920 stopped.