The vanished garden of Lakelands on the Mahon Peninsula in Cork was created by William H. Crawford, of the brewing family, who died here in 1888. His father was that William Crawford who left his benevolent name on city institutions such as the Crawford Gallery and the Crawford School of Art and Design and whose statuary bears witness to the fact that his heart throbbed for his native city.
It was in the Robinsonian garden established by the younger William that the first flowering in these islands took place of the Magnolia campbellii in 1844 and an account ( The History of Gardening in Ireland 1995) describes Lakelands as full of rare plants and shrubs from the Himalayas and South America, among them the Brazilian monkey-puzzle tree, Araucaria augustifolia then (c. 1850) 12 feet tall.
Apartment blocks
Now that developer Tom McCarthy is to build a 400unit development of terraces and apartment blocks - some five and six-storeys high - on a site called Mahon Point, the question must be asked: could this Araucaria be the Chilean Pine listed as No. 224 in the Environmental Impact Study supplied as part of the McCarthy planning application?
This clearly states that the single mature Chilean Pine, No. 224, is to be felled to facilitate the development. The report does indicate the retention of some areas of existing woodland, but the remnants of the tree nursery established here by Cork Corporation is also doomed.
Chilean and Brazilian are both versions of what is commonly known as the monkey puzzle tree (sometimes called the South American Pine), and if the Chilean Pine could be the Brazilian Pine then it is a tree of some significance. Even the possibility of an angustifolia was greeted with interest by the National Botanic Gardens, the Tree Council of Ireland and Patrick Annesley of Annesgrove.
The scenic margins of the land involved were cut for the old Cork-Blackrock and Passage railway line and for generations the ghost of the line has been used as a public path by the people of the Mahon townlands of Blackrock and Ballinure.
Where this path skirts the housing scheme it is to become a "trim trail" with exercise stations and push-up platforms. The ecology is to endure what the EIS describes as "an overwhelming impact"with the disappearance of the meadow pipit, linnet, goldfinch, thrush, robin and wren and their replacement by magpies, starlings and gulls. Four species of butterfly are found here, and on the mudflats the golden plover, lapwing, godwit, dunnock, curlew and redshank feed together.
Lost landmarks
Absorbing these changes, the walkers of Mahon remember that there was another landmark to the forgotten glories of this part of Cork: the beautiful limestone gateway to the Lakelands farmyard, with the date 1812 carved on the lintel - William Crawford was born in 1812 - was taken down in the first residential development of Mahon by Cork Corporation. The promise was that it would be re-erected. Now, after 20 years, no-one even knows where it is.
As the old landmarks are obliterated, new names are invented, for up to now there has been no such place as Mahon Point. Lough Mahon is the lake formed by the River Lee as it spreads into its estuary; its littoral is Ringmahon Strand, which turns south at Ringmahon Point to become Lakelands Strand.
The digging of the Jack Lynch Tunnel trespassed on this acreage and a new walk has been built, almost from Blackrock Castle, out to the edge of the shipping channel. This too is highly popular for walkers from all parts of the city as it links up with the railway line and has been grassed like meadowland, with trees in clusters and wildflowers such as honeysuckle, dogstooth violet and ox-eye daisies through the grass.
Developers don't always appreciate old local names and Cork Corporation has gone along with the marketing ploy of, for example, re-naming Ringmahon Road as the Castle Road, just as some years ago it arbitrarily renamed the historic Kings' Quay Lane in Blackrock as Church Avenue.
Famous residents
But William Penn is reputed to have set off on his journey to America and the foundation of Pennsylvania from Kings' Quay; Ringmahon was the home of the important Murphy family, merchants whose 18th Century fortunes were built on the Caribbean cargoes of their brig, The Ringmahon Castle, and who later went on to found brewery and distilleries which subsequently coalesced into Irish Distillers Ltd., while a later resident of the house was Ben Dunne, founder of Dunne's Stores.
Now Mahon Point is the name for a two-tier speculative concept with the second element being the vast Owen O'Callaghan proposal for a retail, commercial, conference and leisure complex. So what an irony: if No. 224 should be the Araucaria angustifolia - and so far no-one is prepared to say that it isn't - it would be a most remarkable survivor of a species rarely seen growing this far north of the Equator.
Even if it isn't a unique tree, this mature Chilean pine stands as a reminder of the past fame of the territory of Mahon, Ballinure and Blackrock before the duplexes, terraces and high-rise apartment blocks were built.