Tradition has it that the first steeplechase ever held took place in 1752 when two huntsmen in Cork, Edmund Blake and Cornelius O’Callaghan, raced their horses for a wager, between St. John’s church beside the old castle in Buttevant and St. Mary’s church in Doneraile. This was country where the famed Duhallow hunt was already established. The two men are reputed to have raced for the prize of a cask of wine. There is no record of who won the wager. Horse racing was run by men of a culture which also included shooting and fishing (see Anthony Bishop, gamekeeper to the Earl of Bandon at Castlebernard).
Cork Park and the rise of horse racing
By the second half of the nineteenth century the races at Cork Park in Cork city, which opened in the 1860s, were drawing huge crowds to see horses run for considerable amounts of prize-money. By the 1870s, the Great Southern and Western Railway was donating large sums to the race meeting—not out of altruism, but because rail receipts from Cork Park meetings were lucrative. In 1888, the GSWR donated £200 in sponsorship and earned £700 in receipts.
Racing at Cork Park experienced both prosperity and decline. By 1911 the number of race meetings had dropped from five to three, and prize money had fallen. The Easter Monday meeting remained its most popular fixture. The racecourse closed suddenly in 1917, and the site later became home to the Ford factory. Racing was re-established in 1924 at Mallow, where a racecourse remains today.
Rugby and the Cork Constitution Club
Cork Park also hosted many sporting events, including rugby matches in the 1870s. A match in January 1875 saw a team from Montenotte defeat a team from Queen’s College, Cork. By then, several rugby clubs existed, including Cork F.C. and Cork Bankers. The Cork Constitution Rugby Club was founded in 1892, evolving from a cricket club formed by staff of the Cork Constitution, the old unionist newspaper. Its first president was H.L. Tivy of Dundanion.
By 1898, four of its players, David Kilroy of South Mall, Moss Landers, E. J. Fitzgerald and Edward McCarthy, had played for Munster, with McCarthy also representing Ireland. team. When the Mardyke site of the international exhibition was redeveloped as a sports facility, Cork Constitution moved there. In 1911 Ireland played France in a rugby international at the Mardyke. By then University College Cork had taken over the grounds, and Cork Constitution had secured a longterm lease. One of the club’s players, Michael Heffernan of Watercourse Rd., scored a try in a convincing Irish victory.
The GAA and Cork’s hurling heritage
Cork Park was also the first home of the GAA in Cork. It hosted many matches in the Cork championships, first played in 1887, despite complaints about the unsuitability of the surface for hurling. Cork hosted the second-ever meeting of the GAA on 27 December 1884, when Cusack and Davin attended a well-attended meeting at the Victoria Hotel. One of the first GAA secretaries, John McKay worked in the city for the Cork Examiner and Cork Herald.
Initially, All-Ireland championships were contested by the winning clubs of each county. By 1911, Cork clubs had already achieved notable success. In 1890, Aghabullogue won the hurling championship and Midleton won the football. In 1911, Blackrock and Lees won the county hurling and football championships respectively. That year, Cork’s footballers also won the All-Ireland, defeating Antrim 6-6 to 1-2, with dual All-Ireland winner Billy Mackessy, of Lincoln Place among the goalscorers.
The Coughlan legacy in Blackrock
Blackrock was a stronghold of hurling in Cork and home to 10-year-old Eugene ‘Eudie’ Coughlan , who would become one of Cork’s most famous hurlers. His father, Pat, a fisherman, had won All-Irelands in the 1890s. His uncles—Denis ‘Lyonsie’, Jer, Dan, and Tom ‘Honest Man’ Coughlan—also played for Blackrock. Young Eudie picked mussels from the River Lee for export and later worked at the Ford factory. He went on to win seven Cork senior championships and four All-Ireland titles.
Cricket and international visitors
Cork had a long-established cricket scene. The Cork County Cricket Club, founded in 1874 at the Mardyke, played a regular calendar of fixtures. In 1903, W.G. Grace brought his touring team to play an Irish side in Cork during the international exhibition. Grace was dismissed for one in the first over but tried to stay on until Sir George Colthurst of Blarney intervened. The following season, South Africa visited Cork and were beaten by Ireland.
Soccer’s slow rise
Soccer was played in Cork, though not as prominently as in Dublin or Belfast. Unlike rugby, it did not take root in Queen’s College, Cork. A club called Barrackton Rovers AFC was based around the British Army garrison. In 1909, Manchester City played a Munster Selection in Cork. In the 1920s, Fordsons—based at the Ford Motor Company—joined the Irish Free State League, helping soccer gain a foothold in the city.
Road bowling and local sporting culture
While soccer became an international sport, road bowling remained a deeply local tradition in Cork. One of its greatest players, Tim Delaney, is immortalised in the song The Boys of Fairhill. In the early 20th century, the top road bowler was John ‘Buck’ McGrath of Commons Road, a clerk at Murphy’s Brewery. An oil painting of McGrath hangs in the Bowlers’ Rest pub on the Mallow Road.
Golf in Cork
At the Cork Golf Club, laid out at Rathcooney Hill, just above Glanmire Village, David Brown was employed as a professional and he made clubs which he sold to visiting and resident golfers.
Leisure beyond sport
Sport was, of course, just one aspect of leisure life in Cork in 1911. There were two major breweries in Cork: Murphy’s, and Beamish and Crawford. Beamish (see return for Director Ludlow Beamish) and Crawford was established in 1792 by William Beamish and William Crawford, while Murphy’s was established in 1856. Both breweries were best known for their stout. The pubs of Cork were lively and ubiquitous, including that of Mary Jane Dillon on Wolfe Tone Square in Bantry.
Music and cultural revival
The famous Cork Pipers’ Club was founded in 1898, and amongst the founding members were Sean Wayland and Alderman William Phair, who lived at Connaught Avenue. Among a new generation of pipers fostered by the club was Mollie Morrissey from Ballyclogh.
The rise in nationalist culture had brought about the establishment of the Cork Dramatic Society by Terence MacSwiney (see return in Irish for Blackrock) and Daniel Corkery of Bishopstown.
Military and social life
There was also a long tradition of socialising amongst the military in Cork. Around Victoria Barracks, for example, there were concerts and dancing, as well as the tradition of entertaining at home.
Institutions of art and learning
Organisations such as the Royal Cork Institution (1803) were an attempt to mirror the Royal Dublin Society and the Royal Society. Other nineteenth-century bodies included the Cork Society for Promoting the Fine Arts and the Cork Art Union, which replaced it in the 1840s.
The Cork Opera House was opened as the Athenaeum in 1855 and was built with the profits of the 1852 exhibition. It became the Opera House in September 1877.
The Cork Archaeological and Historical Society was founded as early as 1891. The Crawford School of Art and Gallery dates back to the 1880s, and the Cork School of Music to 1878.