Ballincollig Tidy Towns, like so many Tidy Towns groups throughout Ireland, is looking forward to the coming months when lockdown will hopefully ease and Volunteers, CE Workers etc can safely return to their work and we can all enjoy some normality in our lives again. There is so much to be excited about in the coming months as we will all be busy getting the town ready for the return of both the SuperValu Tidy Towns competition and our own annual competition.
Whatever the coming months will bring for us all, Ballincollig Tidy Towns will continue in its endeavours to keep the town moving forward with regard to the growth of pollinator corridors and Ballincollig as a spray free town.
For now, some of our Volunteers continue to pick litter. Last Sunday three bags of litter were collected.
One Volunteer, Kitty, collected nine bags of litter, two bags of cans and one bag of glass over the past number of days.
REACHING A MILESTONE
Ballincollig Tidy Towns wishes to congratulate John O’Neill on reaching a milestone this week. John has reached retirement age and is looking forward to having some well-earned time for himself.
John has been a tremendous asset to Ballincollig Tidy Towns having worked on the CE Scheme and we are better for having had him as part of the team.
Always the first to arrive, John worked hard on the many jobs he undertook. While he enjoyed the camaraderie with his fellow workers and working alongside them, John took pleasure in taking on certain work by himself, making them his ‘projects’. Two such ‘projects’ being Barry’s Road and the Compost Bays at the Allotment.
Never one to watch the clock, he certainly had a great work ethic, working well beyond the required hours and often working over the weekend. His commitment to and interest in Ballincollig meant that work got completed without delay and nothing was left undone.
Everyone in Ballincollig Tidy Towns is extremely grateful to John for his friendship, his hard work, his attention to detail and his desire to contribute to making the town the best it can be.
We all wish John happiness in his retirement and look forward to being able to pay tribute to him in a proper manner once the lockdown and Covid-19 restrictions are lifted.
PLANNING APPLICATION FOR BAKER STREET
Planning has been lodged for sixteen apartments on a small triangular site at Baker Street, Ballincollig which is at the rear of the Community Centre (Station Road) and Scoil Eoin National School.
Planning is being sought for eight one-bed and eight two-bed duplex apartments in a three-block arrangement of three storeys. All apartments will have their own external balcony or terrace and there will be a new vehicular and pedestrian entrance off Baker Street with site circulation roadway and footpaths. There will ten car spaces and external bike parking and an enclosed bin storage area. Also, hard and soft landscaping including open space and boundary.
The planning notice can be inspected at the offices of the Planning Authority City Hall during public open hours.
A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY
The following is from Rod MacConaill from an article in the Times Past journal 2014-2015. What a wonderful piece of history.
A toll road from Cork via Ballincollig to Tralee was constructed in 1812. The toll road commenced at the junction of Magazine and College roads in the Cork City Liberties and continued out through Model Farm Road to Ballincollig and then on to Macroom via the current N22 route. The toll road had two tollbooths in Ballincollig. The first, across the main road in the Main Street of Ballincollig at Station Road (or Chapel Road – as it was then named) and the second at the West Village, across the road to Inniscarra. The tollbooths are long demolished, and the only current visible sign of this toll road are the milestone markers and a section of old wall at the junction of Ballincollig Main Street and Station Road. This wall was part of the turnpike barrier. The wall was originally about three metres in height and is shown at its full height on a photograph of the western end of Ballincollig Main Street taken around the turn of the 20th century. In the mid 1960’s, Cork County Council reduced the wall height because of the restriction to traffic visibility for vehicles exiting Station Road. The barrier across the roadway at a toll station was called a ‘turnpike’. A turnpike is similar to a modern turnstile that was turned (opened) in order to allow traffic to pass after the payment of a charge, or toll, to a tollgate keeper who collected money for the toll road Trustees. The barrier may have been fitted with sharp pointed sticks or ‘pikes’ in its original form in late medieval times. This is why locals refer to the junction of Main Street and Station Road as ‘Pike corner’. A plaque exists to commemorate this part of the town’s history and is located in front of Crowley’s opticians on the Main Street. A court case was taken in 1848 against Florence Donovan (the toll keeper at Ballincollig main street) who was reluctant to give up his tollhouse following the closure of the toll road and the loss of his position as toll keeper; he was fined 6 pence!
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