Monday 9 February 2015

Macroom Market House


A few months ago I  was commissioned by Cork county council to do a series of images of various heritage sites around Cork county to include in their heritage signage that will accompany these sites. This is the Market house at Macroom as it may have looked like during a market day in the early 20th century. One of the interpretations of the name Macroom or Maigh Chromtha, is that it refers to a large old crooked oak tree that used to be in the square in which travelers used to pass under for good luck, as shown in the illustration. There was a market house there since 1620 but the current building is from 1820 and survives very much intact as it was till this day. The image was created with pen and ink on bristol board.

2 comments:

Michael Nolan said...

Really nice draftsmanship man, you need to get some people moving though, poke em with a stick or something, make some kids run around :) Congrats on the commission too, sounds like a good one

JG O'Donoghue said...

ah this was finished up in November, so no adding to it at this stage.

Funnily enough when I was looking at old early 20th century photos of town fairs in ireland, people were all just standing around, chilling and talking. I thought markets were more hectic places, but seems in Ireland 100 years ago it was more of a time for people to catch up, and chill, perhaps do some selling on the side