69 Shandon Street - November 23 1920

 

On the night of November 23rd 1920 the loyalist Anti-Sinn Fein Society with the aid of Auxiliaries/Tans/RIC torched the Sinn Fein club known as MacCurtain Hall at the bottom of Shandon Street. 

No.69 marked - the Sinn Fein Club had rooms on the upper floors. This photo shows what it looked like before it was set on fire. 

The arson at Shandon Street was part of a week long spate of arson attacks carried out by the Anti Sinn Fein Society in Cork city. Also attacked on the same night was the Sinn Fein club on Watercourse Road and the following night the Sinn Fein rooms on Hardwicke Street also suffered from arson. 

Holly sellers at the bottom of Shandon Street in the 1920s. No.69 in the background to the left of "O'Connors" after it was rebuilt following the 1920 fire. 

The Sinn Fein club had been raided numerous times before the arson attack. In one raid led by local RIC constables they seized membership cards of northside Republicans who later had their homes raided. 

69 Shandon St today

The rooms at No.69 Shandon Street continued to be used by Republicans in the decades after the end of the War of Independence and Civil War. In the 1930s it served as Cork Cumann na mBan HQ.

St Patrick Street - October 10 1920

 

It was a Sunday afternoon in October when the British military set up a corden on Patrick Street where they searched citizens walking on their city's main street. 

49 year old Maurice Griffin walked around from Merchants Quay and straight into the military cordon on Patrick Street. Impatient with the hold up he decided to nip down Fish Street, a side street off Patrick Street, but he was spotted by soldiers who went after him.

Fish Street was located on the right, just beyond the Union Jack flags. Today Merchants Quay Shopping Centre stands in its place. 

The soldiers followed Griffin down Fish Street and fired two shots. He fell with two bullets lodged in his back and died in the South Infirmary Hospital the next day. 

Grattan Hill where Griffin lived with his wife and three children. He worked as a labourer .

Watercourse Road - November 26 1920

The upper room at O'Leary's Undertakers on Watercourse Road played host to an IRA ammunition factory.  On a cold November morning volunteers from E Company were there when an explosion occurred. 

Volunteers William Mulcahy, Denis Christopher Morrissey and Donal Kelleher were all employed at the premises as carpenters making coffins. Kelleher stepped outside to light a cigarette and as he enjoyed his smoke he was suddenly blown off his feet and thrown across the road. 

Christopher Morrissey

Watercourse Road today. The scene of the explosion.

As Volunteers Mulcahy and Morrissey were moving grenades one of them exploded. The two men were severely wounded and clinging to life when an ambulance brought them to the North Infirmary. Both men passed away shortly after arrival there. 

Mulcahy was 22 and from Thomas Davis Street. Morrissey was just 17 and from the Commons Road.  Mulcahy had joined the IRA in 1919 while Morrissey first joined Fianna Eireann in 1916 before joining the IRA in 1918. 

Also to die in tragic circumstances on that Winters day was 24 year old Volunteer Timothy Crowley from Dublin Hill.  He worked as a fireman at the Railway Station on Glanmire Road and was killed when he fell from an engine in the railway tunnel there.

 All three northside men were buried together in the Republican Plot in St Finbarrs Cemetery.