Cork City Council hoping to expose as much of medieval wall as possible at Bishop Lucey Park

CORK City’s medieval history is to feature more prominently at Bishop Lucey Park when redevelopment works are completed, with the project team hoping to unveil as much of the old city wall as possible to the public.

Construction works at the park on Grand Parade are to get underway in the final quarter of this year.

Ahead of the planned park upgrade, the old city wall was excavated earlier this month.

“There was an excavation done in the ’80s, but the recordings weren’t as accurate as what we needed,” executive engineer at Cork City Council, James O’Neill, told The Echo. “We just wanted to see how much of the wall was there.”

Preparation for the two-week excavation commenced earlier this year, with works at the park taking place from August 3-17.

“We have our own archaeological department in City Hall and they would have had some records of it back when it was done in the ’80s, but there was very little detail on how it was covered back over again, so we didn’t really know what we’d find or what was left from what was recorded back in the ’80s,” Mr O’Neill said.

“We had to go to tender for the actual carrying-out of the works, the actual excavation. There was an archaeologist plan for it and then they needed a contractor to do the actual excavation and help with the moving of the subsoil and the actual structures that were put back in.

“There was like a bridge over it and a lot of it was cast-in-situ concrete, so there was a fair bit of work in it that we hadn’t anticipated.”

Cork became a walled city in the 13th century, when it was fortified by the Anglo-Normans.

The wall was largely demolished in the 18th century to make way for the rapidly expanding city. During the recent excavation, project workers identified a breach in the wall where a section had been removed to get drainage through in later years.

“A lot of it was removed from where we wanted to expose the wall,” Mr O’Neill said.

“While we were at it, we just wanted to continue on and found the rest of the wall then. That was quite a decent section that was quite well intact.”

Mr O’Neill said it is being assessed as to how best to showcase the old wall in the redeveloped park, while preserving and protecting it.

“We’re hoping to expose as much of it as possible in the new park design,” he said.

“If we expose the whole lot of it, then that could lead to further dereliction, it’ll expose too much of it, and then it’ll just fall away over time.

“It’s just to get that balance right of how much we expose, so people can appreciate it fully.”

Mr O’Neill said that when works commence on the regeneration of the park, it should be “a lot more straightforward” to uncover the wall again.

He said: “When we were putting it back, there was polythene put over the actual wall itself and then pea gravel and then it was backfilled with the subsoil again, so it will be very easy to find it when we go back in there the next time. It’ll be a lot more straightforward and there shouldn’t be any more damage caused.”