Residents again call on Cork council to secure former convent site

Northside residents have again called on Cork City Council to secure the site of a former convent, orphanage and Magdalene laundry which has been on the derelict sites register since 2019 and which has suffered multiple fires.

The former Good Shepherd site atSunday’s Well has been described as “a tragedy waiting to happen” by the chairman of the Blarney Street and Surrounding Areas Community Association.

Local residents say two open access points to the 19-acre site are making it a magnet for anti-social activity, specifically a broken metal gate at the top of Buxton Hill, and a broken fence down off of Convent Avenue. The derelict building is now in a state of extreme disrepair and one local said he was worried that “It will take a death” before the matter is taken seriously.

In April, members of Cork City Fire Brigade attending a blaze at the former laundry had what was described by second officer Victor Shine as “a near miss” when an overhead section of flooring holding two cast-iron baths collapsed in the blaze.

“If anyone had been under it, they were dead,” Mr Shine told The Echo.

Tom Coleman, chairman of the Blarney Street and Surrounding Areas Community Association, said anti-social behaviour on the derelict site had been a long-running issue in the area.

“We had multiple fires on the site, the entire site is extremely dangerous, and with access to it so easy, there would have to be a serious concern that this has the potential to be a tragedy waiting to happen,” 

he said.

Fianna Fáil councillor Tony Fitzgerald said he had asked Cork City Council to urgently contact the owners of the site, and he was calling on the owners to secure it.

The site is currently owned by Drogheda-based Moneda Developments, and plans for what would be Cork’s largest ever student accommodation development, a 957-bed, eight building, multi-storey campus on the site, are currently on hold following several objections.

An Coimisiún Pleanála has received four appeals against the decision this summer by Cork City Council to grant planning for 274 student apartments on the former convent site.

The proposed development by Bellmount Good Shepherd Limited — which is owned by developer brothers Pádraig and Séamus Kelleher — would consist of eight student accommodation apartment blocks, ranging in height from three to five storeys.

A separate, three-storey, mixed-use building is also proposed, with ground-floor shops and upper-floor student accommodation, while the existing gate lodge would be converted to a café and to a co-working space.

The Good Shepherd convent was established in 1870 and operated until 1977.

The convent also served as a Magdalene laundry, an orphanage, and an industrial school, with thousands of women and children incarcerated there over the years. Burial records show that at least 188 women died there.

Some 110 nuns are buried in a graveyard on the eastern side of the site, which is also the final resting place of Ellen Organ, a four-year-old who has been venerated as ‘Little Nellie of Holy God’ since her death in the orphanage in 1908.

High up in an almost inaccessible corner on the western end of the former convent site, in an area beyond the proposed development, a vandalised stone cross bears the names of 30 women.

They were imprisoned in the Magdalene laundry and are believed to be buried in a mass grave. However, three of the women named on the headstone are also listed as being buried at St Joseph’s Cemetery.

The Echo has asked Bellmount Developments and Cork City Council for comment, but has been unsuccessful in contacting Moneda Developments.