Cork Camera Club Historical Photographs (pre1940)

Shandon Steeple

Shandon steeple is undoubtedly the best-known and best-loved building in Cork. Even outside Cork Shandon is the building most associated with the city. St Anne's, Shandon was built in 1722 as a chapel-of-ease to St Mary's, Shandon which stood in Mallow Lane, as Shandon Street was named then. St Anne's, Shandon became a parish church in its own right in 1738. 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 one hundred and seventy feet. The salmon is eleven feet three inches in length. Two sides of the tower are made from red sandstone and the other two are made from 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 warning '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.