George's Quay

Photograph showing people on George's Quay with Parliament Bridge and Father Mathew Quay in the background

Cork Camera Club collection, Cork City Libraries

George's Quay
Cork Camera Club collection, Cork City Libraries

George's Quay

Photograph showing people on George's Quay with Parliament Bridge and Father Mathew Quay in the background

Cork Camera Club collection, Cork City Libraries

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In the 1920's and 1930's, George's Quay was a very busy place, where schooners and coasters delivered cargoes. The cargoes consisted mainly of timber, salt, and coal. In 1939, Haughton's City Saw Mills was nearby on the South Terrace. Lunham Bros. (Cork) Ltd, bacon curers, had a factory in Kemp Street, while the Southern Coal Co. Ltd was situated on George's Quay itself. Parnell Bridge was then a swivel bridge and Clontarf Bridge could be raised, allowing schooners and coasters access to George's Quay.

The large warehouse visible to the left of centre of the photograph, near the junction of Fr Mathew Quay and Parliament Street, was formerly the property of a firm of Quaker merchants, Harvey, Deaves and Harvey. The firm was prominent in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Reuben Harvey's residence at Pleasant Field in Blackrock later became the Ursuline Convent.

Bow-fronted houses on George's Quay

Bow-fronted houses

Photograph of bow-fronted Georgian houses on George's Quay, Cork

Cork Camera Club collection, Cork City Libraries

Bow-fronted houses
Cork Camera Club collection, Cork City Libraries

Bow-fronted houses

Photograph of bow-fronted Georgian houses on George's Quay, Cork

Cork Camera Club collection, Cork City Libraries

Enlarge image

The two bow-fronted houses shown in the photograph are on George's Quay: No.7 is the house on the left, and No. 8 is the right. They are among the finest examples of Georgian architecture in Cork city, and have a chequered history. George's Quay, named for George III of England, stands on ground reclaimed from the River Lee in the middle of the eighteenth century. These houses date from the 1780's. No. 8 was once the residence of Sir James Pitcairn, a surgeon in the South Infirmary from 1835 to 1841. In 1855, it became the home of the Capuchins who had left the old friary in Blackamoor Lane. When the Capuchins moved to new premises in 1871, the house became the residence of the curates serving the South Parish. In the early 1920's, the South Parish acquired the house at No. 7 also. These houses continued to be used as the South Parish presbytery until 1965, when the priests of the parish moved to the new presbytery in Dunbar Street. Today they are called Trinity House 7 and Trinity House 8 and serve as offices for solicitors, financial advisors and a dental surgeon.

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