Before it became Turners Hotel it was known as Lloyds Hotel on Georges Street. The name changed to Turners Hotel in the early 1900s with Edmund Turner proprietor in 1904. The street name, Georges Street, later changed to Oliver Plunkett Street post Independence.
Conways Yard at the back of the hotel.
Turners Hotel sat at the Grand Parade end of Oliver Plunkett Street from number 64-65. Behind the hotel was the spacious Conways Yard with stables for horses and later, room for motorcars.
The proprietors of the hotel, the Turners, were a family with strong links to the revolutionary movement on Leeside and so, their hotel became a hotbed of Republican activity during the War of Independence with several famous names from that era passing through its doors.
In 1913 the Cork branch of the Irish Volunteers was established in Cork City Hall and those who oversaw the historic occasion stayed at Turners Hotel, such as Eoin MacNeil and Sir Roger Casement who were escorted to their lodgings that night by a throng of supporters singing songs and carrying banners.
Jenny Turner was involved with the local Cumann na mBan and married JJ Walsh, a key figure in the establishment of the Irish Volunteers in Cork. Walsh was also chairman of the GAA Cork County Board and a veteran of Easter 1916 where he fought in the GPO and in 1918 was elected Sinn Fein MP for Cork.
During the Irish Civil War Walsh supported the Treaty and became the Irish Free State Postmaster General (Minister for Posts & Telegraphs). During a bitter post office workers strike in 1922, Walsh sacked the strikers and replaced them with new recruits.
Cork Public Museum
He left politics by the end of the 1920s and made a fortune in the 1930s through a number of investments and business ventures in Dublin.
Liam de Roiste & JJ Walsh. de Roiste would become a figure in the fascist blueshirt movement in the 1930s.
A well travelled man, (including a trip on the infamous Hidenburg), JJ Walsh became a supporter of the Nazi's in the 1940s and returned to politics through his patronage of the extreme right-wing Ailtiri Aiseirghe. His support for the Nazis even drew the attention of the Irish Army Intelligence. In 1944 Walsh wrote his memoir 'Recollections of a Rebel' which is full of Anti-Semitism. He died in 1948.
Croke Park 1921, JJ Walsh, Mrs Griffth, Jenny Turner Walsh, Arthur Griffith.
Jenny's brother Tom was a member of A Comany (commonly known as the College Company) 2nd Battalion Cork No.1 Brigade IRA. He was a medical student in UCC but found himself arrested in Britain when he went there to act as guard of honour to bring home the remains of Lord Mayor MacSwiney in October 1920. His crime was wearing an outlawed uniform and he was sentenced to two years hard labour. He was released like other Republican prisoners as part of the truce in the Summer of 1921.
Military Witness Statement of Vol. Edward Horgan.
Turners Hotel served as the IRA Truce Liasion HQ in the latter months of 1921. General Tom Barry also made it his offcial HQ in the city.
During the truce in the Summer of 1921, a group of armed RIC Auxilieries paraded up and down the street outside the hotel taunting Tom Barry and his men who were inside the hotel looking out. They seized two of the cars Barry and his men had parked in the yard at the rear of the hotel.
Michael Collins was also a regular at Turners Hotel and he made a speech in favour of the Anglo Irish Treaty inside the hotel to a small crowd and later had to repeat the same speech from a top floor window to a larger crowd gathered on the street below!
Military Witness Statement of Col. Eamonn Morkan.
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