Nostalgia: Coal Quay market was the pounding heart of the city

IN JUNE 2001 while strolling along Cornmarket St, popularly known as the Coal Quay open air market, I met Pauline Jackson, the well-known Cork writer and historian whom I hadn’t seen for quite a while.

Over a coffee in the Bodega, as we chit chatted our thoughts drifted out onto the Coal Quay — both of us have a passion for this special place — and in a short space of time, our conversation had ignited.

It was the dawn of a new millennium and what better way to mark it, we thought, than to celebrate this unique historical place with a theatrical tour walk. A plethora of ideas gushed forth which we eagerly put on paper for our next meeting and subsequent ones over the course of that summer.

To set this event in motion, we called on friends, writers, historians, musicians, actors, singers, and theatrical societies who all jumped on board and on Sunday, September 2, at 3pm, the Cork Coal Quay Experience — a Grand Historical Theatrical Tour Walk made its debut performance.

Resonating with the nostalgia of yesteryear, songs, music, stories, and theatrical performances thrilled a delightful audience in the warm summer sunshine.

Such was its success that we repeated it in 2002 and 2003. This historic trilogy of walks was captured by Catherine M Courtney and Richard T Cooke and it can now be seen on YouTube titled: Cork Coal Quay Experience Tour

The Coal Quay and its characters

The Coal Quay open air market first became a focal point for street dealers in the second half of 19th century. This street was the heart and soul of the city with its colourful characters on display everyday amidst the hustle and bustle that filled the air. Today, the Coal Quay is modern thriving thoroughfare.

There are only a few of the dealers of the old school left on the street who keep the flag of tradition flying high like their mothers and fathers before them.

Here are some stories about those wonderful dealers who sat by their stalls in all kinds of weather to eke out a meagre living and in doing so helped many a struggling Corkonian family:

Elizabeth Underhill (known to her friends as Lyle Horgan) fourth-generation vegetable dealer. Born in 1919 at No 9 Corporation Buildings, off the Coal Quay, she recalls the good auld days on the Coal Quay: “Everything happened there, on Fridays and Saturdays, the place would be thronged with people from all walks of life.

“The western side would be completely taken over by dealers with their wares while the eastern side was thronged with the country people selling their poultry, eggs, and vegetables.

“On those days the place would be chaotic with chickens and geese running about everywhere, having escaped from their cages. In the course of the excitement, a horse or a donkey would gallop up the street carrying their cart having being frightened and scattering everything before them.

“Amidst the panic of excitement many a fine chicken or duck often wound up on a dealers table for dinner instead of being retrieved and put back into the cage.

“The place was full of gaiety, the women all wore shawls and the sound of a gadget player passing through the Coal Quay would often cause many of the dealers to burst into song or dance at their stalls.”

James McKeon, Cork author, tells us: “Strolling along Cornmarket Street, better known as the Coal Quay market, my mind wandered back many years to when I was a small garsún.

“My mother, with me tagging along like an obedient puppy, was a regular visitor to this famous, old, open-air market. To me it was the pounding heart of the city. How the times have changed. Memories come flooding back: the noise of the wrinkled-faced traders, those timeless women, the salt of the earth, wrapped in their black shawls as they higgled and haggled in various forms of colourful Corkese inveigling customers to buy anything from a double bed to a bunch of bananas.

“The sing-song come-all-ye’s, often accompanied by a banjo or fiddle, wafting through the windows of the numerous pubs, most of them early morning houses ready and willing to facilitate the rural thirsty traders; add to this the different smells and noisy excitement of the nervous animals, restless horses and donkeys, geese and chickens, and the whole place was like an Aladdin’s cave for an impressionable young boy like me. I loved it when one of the kind old ladies gave me a maternal wink and slipped me an apple or an orange behind my mother’s back. It was our little secret.

“The old place-names, which were so descriptive, have always fascinated me.”