Grandpa, the man who began Dunlops in Cork

YOU will find plenty of information online or in libraries about the Dunlop factory on the Marina. Nothing at all though about the Dunlop Tyre Depot on the Lower Road.

It was here, from the early 1920s, that tyres were ordered, dispatched and sent all over the country. And the man in charge of all that was my grandfather, Tom (T.W) Kerrigan, who hadn’t wanted to come down to Cork from his beloved Dublin at all, but was given no option.

Grandpa Kerrigan’s father died when he was young, and in the 1880s, Tom was sent to the O’Brien Institute in Dublin, a school for “boys of respectable parentage in reduced circumstances”.

Here a fellow pupil was Liam Cosgrave, first president of the Irish Free State. “Agreeable boy, nothing outstanding. We slept in the same dormitory,” said my grandpa of Cosgrave.

At school, T.W excelled at shorthand and later he would acquire a second-hand portable typewriter and teach himself to type — both were very useful skills in an age when women did not as a rule take secretarial posts.

Like many of his time, T.W. joined the British army to learn military skills, which he then passed on to the troops of Irish Volunteers he trained on his return to Dublin.

He was in O’Connell Street on Easter Monday, 1916, and later played a key role in the Howth gun-running episode. But that’s a story for another occasion.

There were peaceful times too. Always a keen cyclist, my grandfather was a member of the Old Timers Fellowship of Cyclists, along with John Boyd Dunlop. This led first to a job with the Irish Cycle Co, and then with Dunlop’s in Dublin.

In time, T.W Kerrigan rose to become head clerk to the man himself, and when Dunlop sold on the company, he made it a proviso that T.W should be kept on, since he thought highly of him.

Around 1917, the new management decided to send Grandpa out on the road. He took to sales like a duck to water, and was so successful that when a new tyre depot was mooted for Cork in 1920, he was offered the job of manager there.

“He didn’t jump at it,” says grandson Colm Golden. “In fact, he did his best to say no. After all, generations of his family had been born, lived and been buried in the ancient barony of Fingall in north Dublin. To move right down to the south seemed like the end of the world.” But in the end, as a pragmatic man, he accepted gracefully.

The Irish Cyclist & Motor Cyclist of December 8, 1920, ran a short feature on the promotion, with a picture of T.W “who has been appointed to the position of Southern Irish representative, and takes up his new duties at once”.

Mr Kerrigan, they observed, “has been associated with the pneumatic tyre industry in Ireland for over a quarter of a century, and what he does not know about tyres is hardly worth learning”.

W.T’s son — my father, Joe — recalled travelling down to Cork with his parents and other young family members — the older ones were already working or married, and remained in Dublin.

“The roads were in a dreadful state from the War of Independence, potholes everywhere,” recalled Joe, who would have been about eight or nine at the time and who, together with his brothers, was promptly enrolled at the North Mon.

The family first rented a crumbling and draughty old house at North Esk; later T. W purchased a house off the Blackrock Road which he christened Fingall, in memory of his homeland. 

Here he had a phone installed — which must have made him popular with the neighbours at a time when very few had such a luxury — and even an early ticker tape machine, so that he could keep up with business matters.

His office was Dunlop House, sandwiched between the Metropole Laundry and a sculptor’s factory just at the start of the Lower Glanmire Road, opposite St Patrick’s Church. The telephone number was Cork 613.

The Kerrigans never left Cork, even though the rest of the huge extended family up in Dublin kept sending appeals for them to get out of the sticks and return to civilisation!

During the Civil War, Grandpa was a familiar sight to both sides of the dispute as he travelled the countryside in an ancient, dark blue Austin Seven. On one occasion he was stopped in Cashel and told to hand over his car. “I wasn’t having any of that,” said T.W, “I told the lads it wasn’t mine, it belonged to the company, and I had a job to do. If they took it, they’d have to take me too.” The soldiers insisted they were under orders from their commandant and T.W replied: “Well, take me to your leader!

“They did, and I explained my case. He was an intelligent man and very understanding about my predicament and I was able to continue on my way!” One son, Gerard, joined Dunlop’s, another, Kevin, broke ranks and chose Ford’s, rising to become a director there. Joe opted for the teaching profession, but inherited his father’s passion for bikes. On a pushbike he covered the length and breadth of Ireland, helping to set up the Youth Hostel Association — if you ever hiked unforgiving miles to a ridiculously inaccessible hostel, blame Joey!

On his bike, Joe explored much of western Europe. When he could afford it, he bought his first motorbike and for years took part in grass track events and scrambles all over county Cork.

Joey was still riding a bike in his nineties, and no doubt T.W. was smiling approvingly from a heavenly cloud.

A 1944 diary shows that Grandpa was still working hard for Dunlop’s at the age of 68, meticulously recording mileage and petrol. Here and there, the cryptic addendum ‘Coupons’ reminds us that this was, after all, the Emergency, when fuel was severely rationed.

“He collected all the accounts too, and was a terror for payment — wouldn’t let anyone off the hook,” recalls Colm, who used to travel around with him as a small boy. “But he had so many friends, everywhere.” T.W Kerrigan ran the Dunlop Tyre Depot in Cork until he was in his 70s. After he retired, he would sit happily in the back of my parents’ bookshop on Washington Street, relaxedly mending the spines of battered school texts with red or green sticky tape.

To keep them secure, he always had on hand a supply of black rubber bands. Cut from a Dunlop inner tube.

DUNLOP FACT FILE 

The main Dunlop's factory on the Marina opened in 1935 to manufacture tyres. Before then, the tyres were taken to Cork by lorry, to be sold on through W.T Kerrigan on the Lower Road.

It's possible that T.W Kerrigan's role was to 'sound out' Cork for this larger project and test the volume of business.

However, the Marina didn't directly replace his Lower Road office — both ran in tandem for at least a decade and W.T's diary for 1944 shows he was still working in the Lower Road then. Perhaps its more central location made it easier for customers to call in.

•Dunlop employed 1,800 at the Marina at its peak and the closure of the factory on September 30, 1983 was a massive economic blow.