St Joseph's Cemetery, Tory Top Road

 

Before it was St Joseph's Cemetery it was Lilliput Botanical Gardens from 1809 to 1828. In 1830 the famous Apostle of Temperance Fr Theobald Mathew acquired the land and opened it as a catholic cemetery. 

The old cemetery on the south side of Cork holds the graves of those from all walks of life, from actors to athletes, to politicians and priests, it is also the resting place for many of those from the revolutionary era 1919-1923. 

Eugene O'Connell was a 27 year old married father of a young child who worked as a labourer and lived in a tenement dwelling on Broad Lane in Cork city. Like his father and brothers, Eugene joined the British army and fought with the Munster Fusiliers in WWI. By 1919 he was a Volunteer with the IRA First Cork Brigade and on a dark November night in 1920 he was gunned down. 

Grave of Eugene O'Connell a st Joseph's Cemetery

On the night of November 17th and into the early hours of November 18th 1920, masked RIC Auxiliaries ran amok in the Broad Lane area shooting and throwing grenades. When they entered Eugene's dwelling they shot him dead infront of his wife and small child. 

William Pa O'Flynn from Whites Cross was only 18 years old when he died in an accident in October 1921.

The grave of William O'Flynn 

Young O'Flynn was a section commander with signals unit Cork no.1 Brigade.