The cottages were two stories high and each had four large rooms with a tiny kitchenette. A different family lived in each of the rooms.

The rooms upstairs had wrought iron fireplaces and the downstairs rooms had large open fireplaces with enough space on each side for the kettle and the pots & pans.

The coal for the fires was collected from the local coal yard in the children’s prams and stored in a coalhouse under the stairs. From here, you could get to the yard and to the outside toilet.

Each of the families shared a tap in the yard, which they used to do their washing. This was hung to dry on lines, worked with pulleys, that stretched across the street from the upstairs windows. In the yard of the Barnes' at No. 12 was a mangle to ring out the clothes and a tin bath.

Turner’s Cottages were always full of children playing and having fun. They played in the street swinging on the lamppost outside the Doolin's house at No. 5. When the rag & bone man came to the cottages the children would charge in to their houses to grab any old clothes or bottles, because the rag & bone man would give them a toffee or better still a plastic ring.

This view of Turners Cottages, circa 1970, appeared in the book "The Roads to Sandymount, Irishtown and Ringsend" written by "Philip Doherty".

Turners Cottages neighboured:

• The Vetinary College and Ballsbridge Motors, which still exist.
• The Swastika Laundry which was demolished in 2004.
• The Johnston Mooney and O’Brien Bakery was Dublin's oldest bakery and employed many local people. It was on the site that The Herbert Park Hotel occupies today.
• Herbert Park is the place where many generations of children from Turner's Cottages have played.

An article called Who Remembers Turner's Cottages? written in the early '70s before the cottages were pulled down appeared in the local community newspaper, 'The NewsFour', for Sandymount, Irishtown, Ringsend, Ballsbridge and Donnybrook.

Turners Cottages

This view of Ballsbridge appeared in the book "The Roads to Sandymount, Irishtown and Ringsend" written by "Philip Doherty".

Turner’s Cottages were off Shelbourne Road in the Ballsbridge area of Dublin in a cul-de-sac or ‘gut’ of about sixteen terraced houses. No. 5 Turners Cottages was home to the Doolin family. Richard, Elizabeth and their children Brigid, Ellen, Eva (my mother), Anne, Richard jr., Tony and Teresa all lived there until 1936. Richard Doolin was a labourer.

Brigid, Ellen and cousin Jinnie at Turners Cottages - 1927

Around 1927, the year that Eva Doolin (my mother) was born at No. 5, the Barnes family were living at No. 12 occupying the whole house: Nancy, Jack and their children Berna, Ena, Phyllis, Lily, Maura, and Joseph lived there. Molly, Nancy’s sister, lived upstairs with her husband Ted Conlon and family.When Jack died in 1964, his daughter Maura & her husband Ernest Tilson moved into the house. In 1948 Richard Doolin jr. met Berna Barnes, daughter of Nancy & Jack. In 1955 they were married in Dublin and moved to No. 16, where they lived for the next two years.