Wellington Road, Cork

Wellington Road (Bóthar Wellington in Irish) is an inner-city stretch of road on the north side of Cork city. Wellington Road stretches over a kilometre from St. Patricks Place off St. Patricks Hill, to St. Lukes Cross at the eastern end of the road. thumbnail

Population

Historically, the area was populated by well-to-do families in large houses. At the eastern end of the street, many of the houses were associated with the nearby Victoria Barracks.

In the mid 20th century, most of these houses were sub-divided - into offices at the western end of the street and flats at the eastern end. Over time, these became associated with a transient population as many of the small bedsits created were among the lowest rents available in the city. From the 1990s onwards, the process was reversed with some of the houses restored to single family use and others converted to have a smaller number of more desirable units. However, since the bursting of the Irish property bubble this process has largely stopped.

Facilities

Despite the dense population of multi-storied houses and apartment blocks, there is only one grocer shop, located at the Wellington Road end of St. Lukes Cross. The absence of retail outlets is perhaps explained by the fact that the street runs parallel to and not far north of MacCurtain Street - the principal commercial street in Cork north of the River Lee. A butcher, pharmacy, and public house are nearby.

The road is also home to an Eircom telephone exchange, a backpacker's hostel, several bed and breakfasts, a refugee community centre, a dentist, a currently disused newsagents, and a primary school. Cork's 96FM is located at St. Patricks Place. There are An Post postboxes at Charlemont Terrace and Belgrave Place. There is no bus service along the road. The nearest is at McCurtain Street and Summerhill. Traffic along the road runs both ways, there are no designated pedestrian crossings. A large number of residents live in private flat complexes along the road. The buildings are mainly Victorian or pre-Victorian. The local authority area is Cork city council. Wellington Road lies in the Cork North Central constituency. Responsibility for policing lies with Mayfield Garda Station.

List of terraces on Wellington Road

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 8/9/2014. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.