Let’s rename Bishop Lucey Park in Cork City - I have a great alternative...
Bishop Lucey Park needs an upgrade on its name, says Colette Sheridan.
They have managed to broker a disposal deal with Cork City Council which will see them take over and build onto 54 square metres of Bishop Lucey Park for €1.
Yes, it wouldn’t pay for a bus fare into town. It’s a symbolic sum. (There will also be costs of €1,500 and VAT).
The plan is to build a metal fire escape (the Freemasons have just a timber one at the moment) and a lift.
The Freemasons’ Tuckey Street premises overlook Bishop Lucey Park to the rear. The men promise to open the building to the public more once the work is completed. The extension will cost in the region of €1million, which will be sourced from fund-raising as well as a loan from the Grand Lodge of the Freemasons.
Often accused of secrecy, the Freemasons make an effort to reach out to the public with their weekly Friday coffee morning, which I went along to last week.
Obviously, I haven’t been looking up much when on Tuckey Street because it was only when dropping into the premises (for the second time, having been in the building on Heritage Day some years ago) that I noticed the name at the top of the building. It’s been there for a while, one of the men told me.
But he admitted that they didn’t always advertise themselves as there was a perception that the Freemasons “were out to get at the Catholic Church”.
The dining room where coffee (instant) and biscuits (mostly chocolate) were served is a former shop. It’s large, a little dark, with long tables and a donation box (because there’s no such thing as a free coffee!).
While I was there, there were three Freemasons sitting at the table. The conversation was the usual trying-to-establish-agendas that occurs when talking to new people, all the while trying not to come across as too nosey.
I had read that Freemasons don’t like to discuss politics or religion within the lodge. Which kind of puts paid to any sort of even mild controversy. We kept it light.
I asked if the Freemasons will ever allow women to join the organisation. Women wouldn’t want to join it, I was told.
Originally formed as a guild for masons in the middle ages, the organisation was by its nature for and about men.
Times have changed. But don’t call the Freemasons misogynistic, said one of them: “We don’t hate women.”
Would women want to join men’s sheds? Probably not. But men’s sheds are as much about the mental health of older men as a place for them to practise traditionally masculine skills such as carpentry.
The Freemasons, however, are more of a prosperous, elitist club (at least, that’s the general perception) that are said to help prop up their members, should they fall on hard times. (They also raise money for charity.)
A couple of years ago, the Green Party made this proposal in response to the devastating mother and baby homes report.
Bishop Corneilius Lucey was named in the report. He was at the helm of the diocese of Cork and Ross through the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s.
A diehard conservative – Cork’s equivalent of Dublin’s narrow-minded Archbishop John Charles McQuaid – Bishop Lucey’s name is utterly inappropriate for one of the city’s few green spaces.
Now, with the Freemasons due to have a presence in the park, it is in danger of being associated even more with old fashioned values and associations.
So what could it be called?
Bishop Lucey Park is sometimes erroneously known as The Peace Park, but this name refers to the area at the junction of Grand Parade and the South Mall where the national monument, and the memorials to World War I and the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings are located.
What about calling the space Corcadorca Park? It would acknowledge a cultural force that was memorable for the city, which closed its doors last year following three decades of making great theatre.
App?
