The Growth of Suburban Houses and Tenements
As the merchants became richer they built large houses away from the noise and dirt of the city centre. They built their houses in Montenotte, Blackrock, Sunday's Well, Summerhill and Wellington Road.
The poorer people lived in the city centre and in the lanes off Barrack Street and Shandon Street. They often went to live in the houses left by the merchants, although the houses were overcrowded as each poor family had only one room to live in. Often there was only one outdoor toilet shared by all the people living in a house. Houses that were home to many families were known as tenements. Conditions in the tenements were very bad and many people died from disease caused by dirt.
Look at the map above of modern Cork and see if you can identify which marker represents the first Viking settlement, the merchants new houses in areas such as Montenotte and which might represent newer suburbs created by housing schemes from the 1920s and onwards.
