Throwback Thursday: Cork man's adventures in London, city steps, and forgotten tunnels

Fred Dean, who has an abiding interest in old railways, has given us some interesting information about that long, long flight of steps leading up from the Lower Road to Clifton Terrace.

Apparently, they were even longer once!

“Hi Jo, The steps opposite the train station, up to Summerhill North, were longer than they are now .When first built, they went down to the then ground level. The Lower Road as it now, didn’t exist, nor the railway tunnel. When the tunnel was built, a bridge had to be built to bring the road up to the height needed, so half the steps are buried. Keep up the great stories, cheers Fred.”

So might that make the Clifton Terrace steps a contender for the longest flight in the city? Let’s hear opinions.

And meanwhile, something else hidden from our daily walks. We featured The Scenery and Character of Cork, with the wonderful drawings of Gladys Leach, a few weeks back. To accompany a sketch of Bridge St, Sean Feehan himself wrote “the basements of most of the buildings in Bridge St stretch out under the street, which would appear to be an earlier building custom than the Victorian buildings themselves.” Fascinating.

So is there a network of forgotten tunnels under that busy thoroughfare leading up from Patrick’s Bridge? Seeing that my brother, Tom, had already told me about tunnels leading from Coburg St to Patrick’s Hill, and also about a mysterious one leading from the back of what used to be Christians, underneath Wellington Road, I thought I would ask him about these reputed passageways. “Of course!” he said.

“You can see the iron gratings all down both sides of the street. That tells you that the buildings have basements. You would probably find that they were all connected, one leading into another, although some may have been blocked up by this time.”

Teaches me the old lesson yet again. Use the information you are given. What did I think those gratings were for? Decoration? Oh, switch your brain into gear Kerrigan!

I shared with Tom a story I’d heard recently of old lost passageways hidden in the tiny Winthrop Arcade, and he had a good story to tell about that charming little bit of yesteryear.

“I remember canoeing right through the Arcade back in 1962 with a pal, Micky Lee,” he said thoughtfully. 

“It was the second bad flooding of the city that year. We found a packet of biscuits floating there – they weren’t much good to eat by then, so we skimmed them across the surface of the water! 

"Micky worked with another pal, Eddie McGlennon, at an electricians – was it Foley’s? – next door to that church in Princes St, up on the first floor.” More power to your memory, Tom!

And remember Brian Cronin’s creepy tale of a poltergeist in his hotel? He, you will recall, got a family friend, one Fr Murphy O’Connor, to advise on the best way to exorcise the unfriendly creature.

Now we’ve heard from David Greaney about the Cork links in that story: “Reference in Brian’s recent article to a Father Murphy O’Connor, then (mid 1960s) based in the Southampton area, leads me to believe this to be the same priest who later became Archbishop of Westminster. Cormac Murphy O’Connor’s family grew up in Reading, the previous generation hailing from Cork. The family were fairly well-known wine merchants in the Munster area, ironically catering to the Catholic church’s requirements on that score. A brother of Cormac, Jim, briefly played rugby for Ireland in the mid 1950s, as a number 8. He had captained Bective Rangers and he may well have had a bottle of holy water under his pillow the night before his single Ireland cap, when he scored Ireland’s only points in a loss to England!”

Gosh, that’s a great piece of the Cork jigsaw to slot in place, David. Thank you!

In fact the Murphy O’Connors were still active in Cork in the 1950s and 60s, living next door to us on Summerhill (we were in Mount Verdon, they were in Verdon House next door). At least one or more of the young men of the family entered the priesthood, and the others, as far as I know, still ran the wine importing business.

By the way, Reardens on Washington St, now a favourite haunt with the young crowd, was a wine importer too, and also served the church needs. Back in the 60s, when it was a second home to UCC students, and girls had to make their way up many rickety flights of stairs to find the bathroom, you could see many tiny sample bottles on the way, ranged on dusty shelves, bearing labels identifying their origin, from France, Spain, etc. Bet they’re not there now (and that the ladies’ loos are more conveniently located!)

When it came to serving wine at posh dinner parties back in the 50s and 60s though, there was only one place to go and that was, of course, Woodford Bournes.

Here, courteous gentlemen in white overalls noted carefully the dinner party requirements of fashionable Montenotte housewives and advised on this sherry, that Burgundy, perhaps some of the late bottled vintage port. They knew their wines (and quite possibly the guests they would be serving as well).

Ah Woodford Bournes, who would ever have thought we would see a McDonald’s in your august premises? And will we never again savour the luxurious aroma of coffee beans being roasted right there in the window? It used to drift over the whole city and was part of our growing up.

You demanded more of the story from Brian Cronin, mentioned above - he who grew up on the Lower Road where his mother ran a hotel, and finished his own distinguished career as a hotelier at the Blue Haven in Kinsale.

We left him, you will remember, at the Master Builder’s Hotel on Bucklers Hard in the New Forest, owned by Lord Montague of Beaulieu. Brian, however, despite making a considerable success of the job, felt after a time that he should move on.

“As I didn’t see any real long-term future for myself at the Master Builders, I decided to look elsewhere for alternative employment and toyed with the idea of emigrating to the USA to seek my fortune there. However, an old Shannon classmate of mine, Colm Rice, who was personnel manager of Jurys Hotel in Dublin, made me aware of a vacancy there as Reception and Front of House Manager, which he felt might suit me. I applied for and was successful in obtaining the appointment, which would be available from 1st April 1966 .As I had a month to spare before taking up the appointment, I decided to seek digs in London which would give me the opportunity of seeing my girlfriend Anne, to whom I was becoming increasingly attached.” (They had first met on that stressful weekend at Beaulieu when six London nurses, including Brian’s sister Rosemary, volunteered as waitresses for the occasion).

“A friend of mine, Kevin Starr, had also just vacated his post as manager of the Montagu Arms Hotel in Beaulieu, and had moved to London. That was the beginning of what I might call My Whippy Ice-Cream Interlude.

“As we were both temporarily unemployed, and in dire need of some money to survive, we decided to use the opportunity to try something completely different, visited several building sites to see if we could get work as casual labourers. In the first place the foreman turned out to be Irish. Having asked to see our hands, and then asking what experience we had (‘hotel managers’ we innocently replied) we were turned down flat! We met with a similar fate on two more building sites and then heard that Walls Ice Cream were looking for drivers for their Mr Whippy ice cream vans.“We duly applied, and hey presto, found ourselves renting a Mr Whippy van for the next month or so. We started our new career by visiting schools in the area and also knocked at doors of private houses in the surrounding estates. However we weren’t particularly successful in either case, given that it was the month of February and bitterly cold. Visiting a pub for a lunch-time snack we met another driver who advised us to head for central London and try driving around Hyde Park where we would find tourist families galore. We started at Speakers Corner by Marble Arch on a Saturday morning. This proved to be an instant success so we adopted a system whereby we pulled in by the kerb; opened the sliding window of the van and hit the gong. People came running and we were in business! However it wasn’t long before a police car pulled up alongside and ordered us to drive off.

“We thus had to change our system somewhat: one remaining at the wheel with the engine running and the other hitting the gong and flogging ice cream as quickly as possible while driving up and down Park Lane and Mayfair and taking turns around Hyde Park.

“Every now and then we had to repeat the manoeuvre when the police showed up, but we were never prosecuted other than being ticked off and told to keep moving. So over the following weeks we earned enough to pay our rent and keep us in food and drink for the day. It was all great ‘craic’ and quite a change from running hotels!

“My ‘digs’ during those five or six weeks were in a house owned by an Irish family called Merry who were very accommodating and only charged me a very small rent.

“I shared a bedroom with a chap called Michael who also turned out to be Irish and worked in a shoe shop. Unlike professional hoteliers like Kevin and I, he, as was the case with many other Irish immigrants, [he] had had to come to England because of lack of work at home. By the time we met, he had lived in London for many years but missed the old country terribly. Every morning and evening he turned on Radio Éireann, listening avidly for the latest news from the old country on his scratchy transistor radio. Michael’s Irish identity was very clear for all to see from the large Tricolour pinned on one wall and a large ‘Guinness is good for you’ sign over his bed, to the Declaration of Irish Independence on another wall, and photographs of de Valera, President Kennedy and Pope John 23rd adorning what wall space remained.

“On the morning of March 8th, 1966, I was awakened from my slumbers by Michael who was jumping around the bedroom like a madman, with his transistor radio pinned to one ear and whooping at the top of his voice! ‘What’s going on Michael? I called when I was able to get a word in. ‘Marvellous,’ he shouted; ‘They’ve blown up Nelson’s Pillar in O’Connell Street. That’ll show ‘em!’.”

A great detail to add to that historic event, Brian. Did you give him a free Mr Whippy ice cream to celebrate?

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