Cork History · Rebel Cork

Why is Cork called the Rebel City?

Cork earned the name in 1491, when the city backed Perkin Warbeck, a pretender to the English throne. The mayor of Cork marched with him, the rising failed, and the Crown hanged the mayor for it. The name stuck because Cork kept living up to it for the next four centuries.

1491: the pretender and the mayor

Warbeck arrived in Cork claiming the English crown, and the city took his side against Henry VII. When the cause collapsed, Cork's mayor paid with his life. The episode gave the city its old motto and a reputation that England never let it forget. Five hundred years on, Corkonians wear the name with some pride.

A habit, not a moment

The city picked the losing side again in 1690, when Marlborough's army besieged Cork during the Williamite War and broke through the medieval walls in days. The walls never recovered. Read: The Siege of Cork.

Then came the risings. On the Grand Parade, the National Monument gathers four of them into one group: Wolfe Tone and Michael Dwyer of 1798, Thomas Davis of 1848, and the Cork Fenian Peter O'Neill Crowley of 1867. Ordinary Corkonians paid for it by subscription and unveiled it on St Patrick's Day 1906. They were honouring a century of failed rebellions, fourteen years before their own generation rose.

1920: the year Cork earned it twice over

No year made the name harder than 1920. In March, men shot Lord Mayor Tomás Mac Curtain dead in his home in front of his family. In October, his successor Terence MacSwiney died in Brixton Prison after 74 days on hunger strike, with the world's press outside the gates. In December, British forces burned the city centre, St Patrick's Street and City Hall with it. Read: The Burning of Cork.

The name today

Cork's GAA teams answer to "the Rebels" and the county to "the Rebel County". The city itself goes one better: Corkonians call it the real capital. You can stand where most of this history happened inside one flat square kilometre of the city centre, and the Rebel Cork walking guide maps it site by site.

Hear it where it happened

The Cork City Walking Tour passes City Hall, the Grand Parade and the National Monument, and tells the rebel story alongside the science that built the city. Saturdays and Sundays, 10:00 and 13:30, from The Counting House on South Main Street.

All 30 free Cork history stories live at Cork History.