Not a swinging year, 1690. Up North, the gorefest we came to know as the Battle of the Boyne was grimly unfolding; in Limerick, quiet desperation mounted as William of Orange continued his fiendish siege; around the world, there was famine and pestilence and terrible disease. There was little in the line of light entertainment and there probably wasn't much on the telly.
Down here in Cork, however, the city's famous insularity was becoming manifest and the merchants were studiously ignoring the planet's problems. According to dusty records deep in the bowels of City Hall, this was the first year of trading on the Coal Quay - so as the world turned on a spit of hellish damnation, Corkonians were happily taking care of business.
More than 300 years later, the Coal Quay is thriving again. The outdoor market on Cornmarket Street all but died a ghastly death in the 1960s and 1970s, a badly bludgeoned victim of swish suburban malls and a new-found snobbery: who wanted to buy their grub where grandma had scraped for spuds?
By the early part of this decade the market was an emaciated wreck, home to a mere handful of rattled traders scraping a living in a forgotten, increasingly dilapidated quarter of the city. It was time, the worried honchos at Cork Corporation decided, to call a halt. Armed with an ambitious blueprint and a cheque from the EU (cheers, Helmut!), they set up a sort of municipal ER, mouth-to mouthing life back into the market.
Stand back: the heart is beating again. The patient is rosy-cheeked and well on the road to full recovery. One recent Saturday, in glorious August sunshine, there were more than 50 traders a-hustling and a-bustling. Their stock is varied - everything from organic vegetables to second-hand clothes, home-hewn wood crafts to plants and records and books and assorted gewgaws and thingumajigs. It's going down the proverbial storm with Saturday shoppers, keen to abase themselves at a newly-revived altar of consumption.
The shoppers themselves are a broad mix. Embryonic Spice Girls snuffle for retro-chic booty in the mountains of old clothes, right-on mothers snap up PC nosh, bored fathers wonder if they couldn't do with another radio alarm clock.
The traders, too, seem happy. Clare MacSweeny sources clothes and crafts in San Francisco and flogs them at the Coal Quay for less than a tenner. "I've been doing the market here for the last couple of summers and it's definitely getting busier. It's still a little erratic and a bit seasonal but it's going in the right direction."
The powers-that-be are also satisfied. "We're very pleased with the sort of mix that's developed," says Jim O'Donovan, assistant city manager at Cork Corporation. "I think there's a nice blend at the market now. You can shop for high-quality food or for second-hand goods - whatever. We're confident it'll continue to develop." And sooner rather than later. A nicely-conceived proposal to sling a footbridge across the Lee, linking the Coal Quay with Shandon's steps and steeple, has won a millennium design competition and City Hall seems keen.
"We're certainly looking at the footbridge idea," says O'Donovan. "It could be a very desirable addition." But another part of the proposal - to put a canopy-style perspex roof over the market stalls, has not won favour with traders and may remain on the drawing board.
The market's makeover, coupled with increased pedestrianisation, has acted as a magnet for commercial investment. The success of The Bodega, a swank megaboozer that opened in December, is tempting other developers quaywards and there is already much whispery chit-chat afoot in Cork property circles about other revivable buildings on the Coal Quay.
The obvious hope is that the quay can be morphed into a sort of micro-Camden or Leeside Left Bank - but it would have to be carefully done, for Deep South tastes, soulful as they are, mightn't accommodate anything too Temple Bar, anything with that hint of capital-flash.
But for the time being, the punters are happy and somewhere around 12,000 of them make it to the market each Saturday.
