TENS of thousands of us have strolled from the city down Centre Park Road in recent weeks, on the way to gigs at the Páirc and the Marquee.

In many ways, the tree-lined street provides a walk down Cork’s industrial memory lane.

Today, you pass by the wonderful Marina Market with its teeming stalls selling fancy foods and coffees, head past the National Kart Centre, and then the Rebel City Distillery - which became the first distillery to open in almost 50 years in Cork in 2020.

There are a couple of fitness clubs before you reach the Marquee tents and the site of Funderland.

All these thriving locations are symbols of what Corkonians now do in their leisure time, and with their spare cash - even the distillery holds walking tours of its premises for the public.

We are a consumer society now, but rewind a generation ago, and Centre Park Road was an entirely different vista.

Along this stretch were the two powerhouses of Cork’s industrial manufacturing landscape for the large part of the 20th century - Dunlop and Ford.

The closure of both within the space of nine months in the 1980s were devastating low points in the city’s industrial history.

First to go was the tyre company in 1983. And it was 40 years ago today - yes, on Friday the 13th of July, 1984 - that Ford joined it, severing a link granted by the founder Henry Ford - who had ancestral connections to both city and county - that stretched all the way back to 1917.

One of the reasons that Rebel City Distillery has walking tours is because of the history of the site - for it was........

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