Shandon Steeple

Shandon Steeple

Photograph showing Shandon steeple from Shandon graveyard

Cork Camera Club collection, Cork City Libraries

Shandon Steeple
Cork Camera Club collection, Cork City Libraries

Shandon Steeple

Photograph showing Shandon steeple from Shandon graveyard

Cork Camera Club collection, Cork City Libraries

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Shandon steeple is probably the best-known and best-loved building in Cork. Even outside Cork, Shandon is the building most associated with the city. Saint Anne's, Shandon, was built in 1722 as a chapel-of-ease to Saint Mary's, Shandon, which stood in Mallow Lane, as Shandon Street was named then. Saint Anne's, Shandon, became a parish church in its own right later in the eighteenth century.

Architecturally, the design of the building is very simple. It consists of a square tower surmounted by a lantern; on top of the lantern is a copper dome with a gilded weather vane in the shape of a salmon. The salmon was regilded in 2004. The height of the building is 52 metres (170 feet). The salmon is 3.43 metres (eleven feet three inches) in length. Two sides of the tower are faced with red sandstone and the other two with limestone. The famous bells in the tower were cast at Gloucester by Abel Rudhall in 1750 but were not installed until 1752. Some of the bells have been recast over the years but still bear their original inscriptions. The four-faced clock, made by James Mangan of Cork, was erected by Cork Corporation in 1847. On a part of the clock's mechanism is the grim aphorism: 'Passenger measure your Time, for Time is the Measure of your Being'. The bells were immortalised by the poet and writer Francis Sylvester Mahony, better known by his pen-name of Father Prout, in his famous poem 'The Bells of Shandon'. Appropriately enough, Mahony is buried in the graveyard of the church. Restoration work on the church was carried out in 2004.