Peter Foynes of the Cork Butter Museum will conduct a walk through the historic birthplace of Mary Harris on Saturday morning 29th July 2023 beginning at 9.30 am at the Maldron Hotel.  All are welcome.

Shandon was at the heart of the city food trade in the 18th and 19th Century. Cattle were bought and sold and slaughtered around the area for export. The Committee of Merchants (1769-1925)  conducted the butter trade here and Cork butter was exported from here all over the world. The wealth of the city was largely derived  from these exports.

While the existing portico in the Butter Exchange building dates from 1849, the building and those nearby were extremely busy places when Mary Harris was a young girl.

It was a period of Church building and renovation. The Cathedral of St. Mary and St Anne (North Cathedral) where Mary Harris was baptised was reconstructed in the 1830s after a fire. St. Mary’s Dominican Church on Pope’s Quay was built in the late 1830s. The Church of St Anne, home of the Shandon Bells dates from the early 1700s and was by the 1840s a local landmark, indeed the bells were added in 1847. Other local landmarks familiar to Mary Harris include the Civil Trust Building (1730s) Skiddys Home (1719) and the North Infirmary (1710) site of the present day Maldron Hotel where many of the Spirit of Mother Jones events are held each year.

The Shandon Historic Quarter contains some of the network of streets familiar to Mary Harris and while in 1750, 23 streets and passageways were connected to Shandon Street itself, some still remain as they were in the 1840s.

The area is ideal for walking, so join Peter on Saturday 29th to learn of the home of Mother Jones and a present day local vibrant community.

Then later that day at approx. 4:30 p.m., Maggie O’Neill will conduct a Feminist Walking Tour of Cork City. Meeting point at the Maldron Hotel, Shandon.