Throwback Thursday: Taking a drive down memory lane in Cork

Thu, 13 Nov, 2025 - 06:57

Joe Terry was out on a drive recently and found himself reflecting on how times and indeed our very landscapes have changed since he was a young lad growing up in Cork.

“My wife and I are on our way from Tower to Cloyne. Easing out of our driveway, I carefully check the way is clear. At a slow speed, I proceed over the traffic-calming rumble strips. Rounding the first right-hand bend, I drive past Tower Supervalu shopping centre. Approaching the T junction, I wait behind other vehicles before my chance comes to turn right onto the busy thoroughfare linking West Cork with East Cork via Ballincollig, and North and East Cork via Blarney village. The mention of East and West Cork reminds me of a saying I heard at times growing up in Cloyne parish: ‘Go East for a horse and go West for a woman’. Heading towards Blarney, my co-driver alerts me to the high probability of encountering a speed trap van on this stretch of the road, a regular occurrence. Knowing that fines for speeding doubled recently from €80 to €160, I willingly take heed. The massive punitive inflation brings to mind the introduction of driving licences (under British rule at the time) in 1903. As rampant inflation was not in vogue during the following decades, I was able to buy my first Irish driving licence for £1 in the late 50s, without having to do a driving test.

“Whilst on the subject of driving, and the possibility of encountering law enforcement, I may as well mention my only experience of having blown into a breathalyser bag. Soon after the 1967 introduction of the breathalyser test in the UK, I had just left a friend’s house in East London. I walked across the busy A11 road to my Mk1 Ford Cortina, parked on a side street. Soon, I was driving towards Stratford when a young policeman stepped onto the road with his hand up. I wound down my side window. Leaning his nose over the rim of the window, he said, ‘You’ve been drinking’ ’Yes,’ I said, “I’ve had one or two.’ “He stood back and spoke into his shoulder-mounted radio. ‘Wait,’ he then said, ‘I’m going to have you breathalysed.’ Within minutes, a high-performance Jaguar, blue lights flashing, pulled up in front of my car. Getting out, the two new officers put on their peaked uniform caps. One of them asked me to blow into a recently-introduced and new-to-me breathalyser bag. I found the process difficult, much more onerous than blowing up a Christmas balloon. Through my rearview mirror, I watched the three policemen confabbing. The two mature officers got into their police car and did a U-turn, and then headed off at high speed. The tall-helmeted rookie officer came to my side window. Pivoting an outstretched hand from side to side, ‘borderline case,’ he said, ‘off you go.’

“Soon after the breathalyser episode, I was driving from Stanmore to Bushy Heath in North London one afternoon when I was waved down by a police sergeant manning a newly-introduced speed camera mounted on a trestle. ‘Where’s the fire?’ he shouted as I wound down the window. If I had responded with matching sarcasm, I would have been asking for trouble. However, he did wave me on, shouting, ‘You’re well over the fifty miles an hour speed limit.’

“Fast forward 50 years plus, on my way to the Séanabea Cottage Open Garden fundraising event for Marymount Hospice, I drive over Willison’s Bridge straddling the Shournagh River, pass by Pauds Cross and approach Blarney village. Taking the bypass, I avoid going through the narrow village thoroughfare. I reflect on my first visits to Blarney over 50 years ago.

At that time, I was working for a company having a construction-related contract with a factory in Sixmilebridge, County Clare. Early in the week, I would drive from Cork city, accompanied by a coworker, to our work location in a company Volkswagen van loaded with tools and equipment. We would stay in lodgings during the week. On Fridays, at the end of the working week, I would drive back to Cork, dropping off my co-worker Brendan in Blarney, where he lived. At that time there were no bypasses, no motorways, no cycle lanes, and no traffic lights in Cork, Limerick, or Clare. A modern rarity at the time was the Tivoli dual carriageway, at the end of which was the Dunkettle roundabout. Getting to and from Sixmilebridge meant driving through every village, town, and Limerick city itself. During the winters of the early 1970s, driving conditions on the infamous Mallow Road were problematic, with its dangerous bends and hazardous, almost impossible to overtake, slow-moving lorries going to and coming from the Mallow sugar beet factory.

“Then, in 1973, a magic wand was waved when Ireland’s application to join the European Economic Community was accepted. High expectations of the benefits of the country becoming a member abounded; the EEC would fund everything, including the building of roads and motorways. A Garden of Eden expectancy prevailed. Ireland’s manufacturers and food producers would have a potential market of five hundred million ready-made customers. Ireland would have seats in the EEC parliament, and the government would appoint a preferred person to serve on the EEC Commission.

“Motorway construction and road improvements certainly began to take place...”

“Today, leaving Blarney behind, I have difficulty putting my reflective thoughts out of my mind. Continuing towards Blackpool, I note the many changes to the route since the ’70s: the removal of many dangerous bends, a motorway bypassing Killeens village.... passing through Blackpool, I reflect on the demise and ultimate closure of the great Sunbeam Wolsey textile factory, and the closure of so many other textile factories across Ireland.

Sunbeam workers in their hundreds at a night out at the Arcadia Ballroom in 1936.

“Back to the present. Rather than taking the North Ring by-pass route, and as it’s a Sunday with low traffic, I drive via Leitrim Street, Coburg Street and onto the one-way vehicular traffic MacCurtain Street. I remember a time when this street accommodated two-way traffic, as did other roads in Cork City, when often there were gridlocks and traffic stalled for long periods. I recall on one occasion, during a wet and dark winter evening, waiting in Washington Street for the arrival of a delivery truck from Dublin that took two hours to travel from Lower Glanmire Road via MacCurtain Street and Patrick Street. The introduction of the by-passes, one-way streets, roundabouts and traffic lights proved to be a welcome success.

“Going past St Patrick’s Church on the Lower Glanmire Road, I’m conscious of travelling parallel to Penrose Quay, less than a hundred yards away as the crow flies, where I boarded the MV Innisfallen for the first time in 1960 to become an Irish emigrant for the next ten years.

The Innisfallen IV passenger ferry at Penrose Quay on March 10, 1975.

“Coming from rural Ireland, London was an eye-opener. Not everybody made the sign of the cross passing a church; indeed, not everyone went to Mass or church on Sundays. Confession attendances were infrequent, unlike in Ireland, where the Catholic Church decreed that Catholics confess their sins once a month, and under the threat of mortal sin at least once a year. In London, not all men and women living together were husband and wife, as I believed was the case in the parish of my birth. Many lived with the spouse of another.. Many were divorced, legally separated and no longer bound to live together for the rest of their lives through sickness and sorrow. Gangsters, knuckle dusters, teddy boys, winkle-picker shoes and drainpipe trousers were all new to me. Getting my head around the cockney slang of the male receptionist at the Irish Hostel, in Camden Square was not easy. Not trusting my fellow sleepers in the tightly-packed multi-occupancy dormitory at the hostel necessitated me sleeping with my stockings on, my cash stuffed inside next to my ankles.

“Back to the present, on the city’s outskirts, I pass by extensive roadworks at the River Lee tunnel interchange and continue driving towards Midleton on the M25 motorway.

“At the far end of the Midleton bypass, I exit the roundabout and head towards Whitegate, bypassing the narrow winding road through Ballinacurra village. From the other side of Saleen village, I follow the temporary signage giving directions to Séanabea Cottage Open Garden.

“On the approach to Coolbea crossroads, I slow down and halt like a hearse would outside the home of its dead passenger. I pause, looking towards the bedroom of the derelict house where I was conceived and born, in the house where nine of my brothers and sisters that survived birth were nurtured from childhood to adulthood.

“Next stop, Séanabea Cottage. I park in one of the parking lots provided by local farmers Tim Garde and Muirish Duhig. At the cottage entrance gates, my brother John greets us as he greets hundreds of visitors who have come to marvel at the beauties of the gardens and who, by the end of the event, would donate €6,500 to Marymount Hospice.”

“What a marvellous reflective drive, Joe, and isn’t he right? So much has changed in and around our city, and within our culture too. Back in the 1950s, you didn’t dare disobey a priest or your teacher. You behaved and listened to what your parents told you. Young couples had to make do with snatched cuddles in the sitting room while authority was out making the tea, while living together before marriage was unheard of.

And can others recall how you walked from one side of the city to the other without even thinking about it? How your father could drive a car up this street and down that one without having to make complicated calculations about how to get from A to B – or even if you could get there at all? When a job at Dunlop’s or Ford’s was for life? Let’s hear your own memories.