Qualla: Cork City Gaol

Cork City Gaol: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit psyberartist, CC BY 2.0. On a frosty November night in 1923, forty-two prisoners climbed a rope ladder over the outer wall of Cork City Gaol and ran into the city in stockinged feet. They went over in three batches of fourteen, the maximum number that could hide together in the shadow of the wall while waiting for the moon to move. Each batch took fifteen minutes. All the men in the first group were facing the death penalty, and they cast lots for the order in line - first out had the best chance, last out had the worst. When prisoner number nine went over, the sentry on the wall heard something, and the man balked. After a few seconds of silence the work resumed. By morning, some of the escapees were already free of the city; others were recaptured later that day. The jail closed for good a few months earlier and the escape was, in a sense, its closing ceremony.

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Image: psyberartist | CC BY 2.0

Cork City Gaol: A Replacement for the Old Jail

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The Speckled Bird, CC BY-SA 4.0. An Act of Parliament in 1806 authorised the construction of a new Cork City Gaol to replace the cramped, unhygienic North Gate Bridge prison that had served the city for nearly a century. The first site selected was at Distillery Fields. That site was abandoned when surveyors rea...

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Image: The Speckled Bird | CC BY-SA 4.0

Cork City Gaol: The Women's Prison

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit psyberartist, CC BY 2.0. In 1877 the General Prisons (Ireland) Act reorganised the Cork system. The Cork City Gaol on Sunday's Well became the women's prison for both Cork City and Cork County, and the Cork County Gaol on Western Road near University College Cork became the men's prison. On the day the c...

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Image: psyberartist | CC BY 2.0

Cork City Gaol: Republican Prisoners

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Fensome, CC BY-SA 2.0. During the Irish War of Independence, the women's prison held Republican women. Constance Markievicz, the suffragist and socialist revolutionary who had been sentenced to death after the 1916 Easter Rising and then had her sentence commuted, was imprisoned there in 1919. So was M...

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Image: Richard Fensome | CC BY-SA 2.0

Cork City Gaol: The Rope Ladder Escape

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Maelor, Public domain. The November 1923 escape happened because the men were too valuable to lose and the building, despite its castellated walls, was not actually escape-proof. They were considered high-value enough that they had been sent to the Sunday's Well prison precisely because it was thought ...

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Image: Maelor | Public domain

Cork City Gaol: Silent Decades and a Second Life

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit psyberartist, CC BY 2.0. From 1927 the top floor of the Governor's house was put to a strange new use: a radio broadcasting station. 6CK was the first official radio station in Cork, and it broadcast from the gaol from 1927 until it closed in September 1930, when it was absorbed into the national 2RN net...

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Image: psyberartist | CC BY 2.0