The Turtle Bunbury Podcast

The final episdoe of the series takes on the 21st century. The last of the original Maxol depots are phased out as a new generation of award-winning service stations begin to appear across the island. The company rides out the economic recession and turns its attention to green energy options, while Covid 19 rears its head just as Maxol prepares to mark its centenary.

The company pushes into third place in the race to be Ireland's largest petrol retailer with the 'Deal of the Decade' and a renewed focus on retail. A transformative restructure creates the Maxol Group, while a reunification of management from 'north and south' becomes a corporate blueprint.

Maxol breaks free from Shell and launches a rebrand media blitz with new colours, a massively successful advertising campaign (Free a Nipper!) and some immaculately timed sporting sponsorship. Importing fuel into Drogheda and rationalisation are among the way to confront the Mandatory Regime and Price Control.

The Troubles in Northern Ireland, two major global oil crises and a glut of domestic strikes piles on the pressure as the next generation of McMullans take the helm. The company homes in on improving stations, staff and trucks, while a new venture in central heating is launched.

The Maxol brand is born in an age of newness from forecourts, pumps and trucks to strategies and uniforms. Drivers such as Billy 'True Gel' Murray and Rasher Halligan assert their rights at the East Wall depot while the death of the Boss paves the way for new management in Northern Ireland.

The boom strikes but the McMullans face severe pressure from the multinational oil giants and the solus system. The advent of diesel and a joint venture to establish Kosangas help save the day. Global politics comes into play with crises in Iran and the Suez leading to the birth of the Whitegate Refinery.

With Europe decimated by war, McMullans finds itself swallowed up by government ministries on both sides of the Irish border. The Boss takes a new wife, as do his two oldest sons, while everyone waits patiently for a post-war boom.

A fabulously timed deal to pioneer the sale of bottled domestic gas in Ireland makes amends for harder times as the McMullans concede to separate entities for its operations in Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State.

The oil industry rides out the Great Depression as McMullan's stalwarts like the mysterious Major McMahon, Wimbledon champion Jean Borotra and golfing great Cecil Ewing make their mark. Shell pile on the pressure but a new generation of McMullans is coming to the fore.

McMullan Brothers is born into a world of pogroms, riots, partition, and civil war; the directors hold their nerve and are running the biggest motor fleet in Ireland by the mid-20s. There are pay-rises all round but the relationship between the McMullan brothers reaches boiling point.

Remarkable ties with Michael Collins, the tragedy of the Somme and the evolution of the motor car industry form the backdrop as we follow founding father William McMullan from the 1903 Gordon Bennett Cup Race through to his ingenious contract with the Anglo-Mexican Petroleum Company at the end of the Great War.

A sensational bigamy trial and a historical interest in kelp are among the tales told in this first episode, which explores the back-story of the McMullan family from the plantations of the 17th century through until the birth of Maxol's founders.

Journeying to her West Cork school on the back of her father's milk cart is among the earliest memories of 91-year-old Freda Jones, a much admired organist living near Baltinglass, County Wicklow. She recalls her childhood days alongside the Schull to Skibbereen railway line before she left for boarding school at the Collegiate School, Celbridge. She also tells how she was obliged to give up her teaching career in Baltinglass, County Wicklow, following her marriage in 1957."

An unexpected flood, cattle going into a bank and the indispensable Tailor's Goose are among the recollections of the charming, pipe-smoking 75 year old Michael Johnson, a fifth generation tailor based in Tullow, County Carlow. Michael recounts some of the remarkable scenes he has witnessed from his window seat in the tailor's shop, as well and the contentment of working alongside his son.

This final episode tells the 20th‑century story of Corkagh through the Colley family, into which Edie Finlay married. Turtle Bunbury traces their roots from dastardly Tudor schemers and the Duke of Wellington's ancestors to George Colley's deaf engineer‑motorist world at Corkagh, their close links to Titanic victim Eddie Colley, novelist Elizabeth Bowen and actor Ralph Fiennes, as well as the motor‑mad Dudley Colley with his "Yellow Peril" car and Corkagh Dairies. As revolution, world wars and changing economics close in, the house is finally sold and demolished in 1960, the estate reborn as Corkagh Park – bringing this long saga from medieval marshland to modern public amenity.    

In this episode, Turtle follows the rise and fall of the Finlay family, the Scottish‑Irish bankers who made Corkagh their home for nearly 200 years. Tracing their origins back to Scotland where Macbeth and Mary, Queen of Scots both played a part, it rolls through Thomas Finlay's 18th‑century Dublin bank and land purchases, through John Finlay's role in Grattan's Parliament, the Volunteers and the 1798 and 1803 crises, taking in a Swedish iron tycoon and Jonathan Swift's wish to have all bankers strung up. We the turn to later generations who planted Corkagh's trees, fought in the Boer War and died on the Western Front, Turtle traces how this one family's fortunes mirrored the booms, panics, rebellions and wars that shaped Ireland from the Georgian age to the aftermath of the First World War.

This episode dives into the explosive story of the Corkagh gunpowder mills and the French Huguenot families who ran them. Turtle Bunbury follows Nicholas Grueber, the Chenevixes and the Arabins as they harness the River Camac to power a complex of mills that supplied gunpowder to the British army and East India Company, fed the empire's wars and infrastructure projects, and periodically blew themselves to pieces in spectacular accidents. Along the way, we meet colourful chemists, generals and merchants whose work at this quiet corner of Clondalkin helped sustain Britain's rise as a global military power.  

This episode explores Corkagh's "French connection" – the remarkable influx of Huguenot refugees who remade this marshy corner of south Dublin after fleeing Louis XIV's persecution. Turtle Bunbury traces how skilled French Protestant families like the Chaigneaus and Arabins brought wine, weaving, finance and gunpowder expertise to Ireland, fought for King William at the Boyne and Aughrim, and built Corkagh House and its gunpowder mills, weaving their stories into the wider tapestry of the Protestant Ascendancy and Dublin's 18th‑century boom.  The Chenevix, Desbrisay and Des Grangues families also feature.

In this opening episode of a 5-part Corkagh history podcast series, Turtle Bunbury traces the story of the landscape long before Corkagh House, from Mesolithic toolmakers and Bronze Age axe‑heads through the early monastery at Clondalkin, its round tower and Viking attacks, to the coming of the Normans and the turbulent wars of the 17th century. Turtle explains how church lands, moated castles, confiscations under Cromwell and the Williamite settlements gradually shaped the "marshy place" of Corkagh into a church‑controlled demesne called Crosslands, setting the stage for the Huguenot builders, gunpowder mills and big‑house families explored in later episodes.  

The incredible tale of the tempestuous Sligo‑born dancer who seduced Franz Liszt and brought King Ludwig of Bavaria crashing down before embarking on a new life running a saloon for gold miners in California. In this episode, Turtle Bunbury traces Lola Montez's journey from scandal‑soaked beginnings and a disastrous teenage marriage, through her reinvention as a "Spanish" femme fatale who bewitched Europe's stages and Bavaria's ageing king, helping to topple governments and ignite revolution. Following her exile from Munich, we track her wild afterlife on the American frontier – dance halls, duels, lectures and liquor – to reveal how an Irishwoman with a gift for reinvention left chaos, fascination and legend in her wake on four continents.