The grounds began life as the western part of Cork Park, an unenclosed playing field stretching along the north channel of the River Lee. From the 1870s, sports of every kind happened here - GAA matches, rugby, soccer, schools' competitions - and the fact that the field was open and free meant that nobody could charge spectators. Important Cork GAA matches were played at Cork Park until the Cork Athletic Grounds opened in 1904. Rugby clubs preferred the enclosed Mardyke cricket ground to the east when they could afford it. Then, in 1902, Cork Park hosted the Cork International Exhibition, and the city used the occasion to enclose what they called the Western Pitch. Two rugby clubs - Cork Constitution and Cork County - took the lease in 1904. They put down a 200-pound bond with the IRFU to persuade them to stage an international in 1905. They spent 1,500 pounds putting up a grandstand. They could not service the debt. University College Cork took over the lease in 1911 and bought the ground outright in 1912.

The Mardyke became a fascinating loophole in the GAA's most controversial rules. Rule 27, the so-called Ban, prohibited GAA members from playing or watching rugby and soccer - the foreign games - on penalty of suspension. Rule 42 prohibited those same games from being played on GAA-owned pitches. But the Mardyke was owned by UCC, not by a GAA club. So rugby, soccer and Gaelic games could legitimately share the same turf. During the Irish revolutionary period of 1916-1923, this generated occasional tension between UCC GAA on one side and UCC Rugby and UCC Soccer on the other - young men of the same university, sometimes the same friend group, navigating the politics of which sport you were allowed to play in which decade. Eventually Rule 27 was abolished. Rule 42 was relaxed long enough for Croke Park to host rugby and soccer during the Lansdowne Road rebuild in the late 2000s. But for sixty years the Mardyke quietly demonstrated that the rules had a workaround if you had a university willing to provide one.

Through the middle of the twentieth century, the Mardyke was the most important sports ground in the city. League of Ireland soccer clubs played their home matches here: Fordsons, Cork F.C., Cork City, Cork United, Cork Athletic and Cork Hibernians, in the long chain of professional clubs that have come and gone in Cork football since the 1920s. Munster Rugby's matches against touring sides - All Blacks, Springboks, Wallabies - alternated between the Mardyke and Thomond Park in Limerick from 1904 until the 1950s. Then Munster developed Musgrave Park as a dedicated rugby ground and the Mardyke's senior rugby role declined. University College Cork A.F.C. still plays there, hosting the 2009 Collingwood Cup, the 2015 Crowley Cup and a League of Ireland Cup quarter-final against Dundalk in 2015. The athletics track is named after Sonia O'Sullivan, the Cork-born middle-distance runner who won Olympic silver at Sydney in 2000 and won the 5,000m World Championship gold in Gothenburg in 1995.

On 19 November 2009 the River Lee burst its banks. It was a catastrophic flood for central Cork, sweeping through the historic core of the city; for the Mardyke it meant that the sports grounds and the arena, sitting low beside the river's north channel, were submerged to depths that ruined floors, soundboards, gym equipment, electrics and finishes. The Mardyke Arena reopened on 15 February 2010 after four million euro of repairs. The athletics track, the all-weather pitches and the grass fields were back in use through the spring. The Mardyke Arena's eight-court badminton hall, its 25-metre swimming pool, its gym and dance studios continued to host UCC's sports programme, and the UCC Demons basketball team - affiliated with the college but open to non-students - took the floor again. The athletics track itself reached the end of its lifespan in 2024 and was closed for resurfacing. The kayakers train in the river that did all the damage, just outside the arena's western wall. Cork has long memories. The 2009 flood is one of them.