Cobh Heritage Centre

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The Queenstown Story @Cobh Heritage Centre

From 1849 to 1921, the present town of Cobh was known as Queenstown in honour of Queen Victoria who visited the town in 1849. Our Exhibition,” The Queenstown Story” is located in the Victorian Railway station, a building with a great History of its own!!  

 Visitors will learn about the story of Irish Emigration, as well as the maritime, naval and social History of the area. It takes the visitor on a journey of exploration of the lives of the many millions who left Ireland from the 1600’s right through to the 1950’s. Stories of the early emigrants to Virginia , the Carolinas and Canada , the Forgotten Irish who endured forced labour in the West Indies and also the transportation of convicts to Australia and the mass emigration during the Famine period to North America and the sinking of the Titanic and Lusitania and their connection with this harbour. 

Throughout the exhibition there are many individual stories to be found such as that of Jeremiah Burke and his message in a bottle from the Titanic, Margaret Drury and her voyage from here to Australia on a convict ship and Denis Lennon and Mary Mullen, The “real” Jack and Rose on the Titanic. Visitors will be given a ticket with the name of a real passenger and they find their story within the exhibition.  All is explained in a variety of interesting and artistic ways. It is a moving, educational, interesting and evocative experience which enables the visitor to walk in the footsteps of our ancestors who left from here and whose last sight of Ireland was the town of Cobh.