A sculpted dog trough on St. Patrick's Street has faded from memory, if not from sight
Séamus Murphy created a trough for the dogs of Cork to quench their thirst. Nowadays, it's mostly filled with cigarette butts.
When sculptor Séamus Murphy was commissioned to make a trough for the thirsty dogs of Cork back in the 1950s he probably didn’t expect it to end up largely forgotten and mostly filled with discarded cigarette butts.
Sadly, that’s the state of the limestone trough emblazoned with the word madraí, the Irish word for dogs, that lies under the window of a vacant shoe shop within shouting distance of the statue of Fr. Matthew at the top of St. Patrick’s Street.
In Cork, the dogs read Irish
The dog trough was commissioned by Knolly Stokes who opened the Milk Bar restaurant in 1936 on the street. (Stokes Clocks, relations of Knolly, were recently commissioned to repair Mangan’s Clock, which is situated almost directly across the street from Murphy's trough.)
“They changed the name of the Milk Bar to the Old Bridge Restaurant,” Colm Murphy, Séamus’s son, told Tripe + Drisheen, which is around the time the idea for a dog trough came about and also when his father came to be involved.
“The ladies who took coffee in the morning from Douglas and Montenotte used to go in there. A lot of them had little Pekinese dogs and toy dogs and they used to be tied onto the railings outside,” Colm said.
That’s why Knolly commissioned Séamus Murphy to carve the trough; so that the dogs in waiting would not be parched.
But, as Colm points out, the trough wasn’t just for the dogs tied up outside, rather it was for all the dogs of the city.
Knolly, however, on seeing the finished trough and the inscription in Irish, reportedly said to Séamus Murphy, “I’m not sure a lot of my clients could read Irish.”
“My father is reputed to have said, ‘Well that’s alright, but I’m quite sure all the dogs can,’” Colm said.
Séamus Murphy’s work is synonymous with Cork: the stone carver turned sculptor's work is on display throughout the city and county from Fitzgerald’s Park to the Crawford Art Gallery, St Finbarr’s Cemetery, UCC, Ballyvourney and Gougane Barra.
Murphy, the author of Stone Mad, has carved busts of presidents, headstones and religious statues.
For years Murphy had a studio and stoneyard in Blackpool; he also designed the Church of the Annunciation in Blackpool.
Colm said Knolly Stokes bequeathed the dog trough to the people of Cork but overtime the trough has largely faded from memory. In fact, at one stage the sculpture was even removed from its location at 124 St. Patrick’s St.
The curious incident of the missing dog trough
For many people in Cork, the first and last time they might have heard of Murphy’s dog trough was when it went missing in 2019, a right “brouhaha” as Colm described the incident.
As he recalled, the shop above the trough was being renovated when the trough went missing. The incident made local and national headlines and the Gardai were called to investigate. Cllr Kieran McCarthy called its removal “cultural vandalism.” The City Council issued an appeal for its safe return, calling the trough a “significant piece of Cork city’s heritage.”
And then, in circumstances that have still not been fully explained, the trough was located and returned.
Colm has more questions than answers about the removal of the dog trough; he also has a few theories.
Might the same crew who removed the trough have replaced it?
T+D have asked Cork City Council if a report into the incident was ever published and if so for access to those findings.
Curiosity and Miss Otis
Ian Dempsey, a development consultant based in West Cork, had long been familiar with the many works of Séamus Murphy. He first came across mention of the trough in a book, after which he went in search of it with his dog Miss Otis.
Ian told Tripe + Drisheen that when Miss Otis was much younger the pair would often make a pilgrimage to Murphy’s trough when they visited Cork city.
“I decided it would be nice to bring a bottle of water, fish out the debris, and let Miss Otis drink out of the trough.”
Every time he did this, passersby would stop up and it “would spark a bit of curiosity.”
Ian is a self-professed wanderer, with a healthy curiosity about place and history, especially around “how a place reveals itself.”
As he said, the combination of a dog trough with dogs drinking from it on the city’s main thoroughfare lends itself to conversation, akin to the canine version of water cooler conversations.
Ian, though, has a bigger point about the significance of the small trough on a street that has more than a dozen vacant shops, including the vast Roches Stores building.
“They’re the things that confer character on a place. It’s the structure itself, but it’s also the story around it,” Ian said, referring to the dog trough.
“It’s just a pity that these things aren’t seen for what they are. I think we could make more of so many more things that we have.”
Colm Murphy said he has no interest in seeing the trough moved, or “boxed off in a zoo”.
“Any civilized city has sculpture out in the public thoroughfare,” he said.
Colm welcomes interventions such as the ones carried out by Ian Dempsey. A plaque placed at ground level on St. Patrick’s Street could help too in providing context.
As Séamus Murphy would have likely pointed out, the dogs won’t read it, but we might, and in doing so come to appreciate a little bit of heritage that’s long been overlooked on Cork’s main street.
Miss Otis very much enjoyed this article. 🦮🐾🦴
I'd love to read some articles on famous Cork women.