O'DONNELL, JOHN THOMAS

Engineer.   John Thomas O'Donnell was born on 24 December 1894 and attended Mount Melleray College before going to England in 1913 to serve an apprenticeship at Green's Engineering Works in Leeds.  After further engineering experience at the Royal Aircraft factory at Farnborough and the Royal Ordnance works in  Coventry, he entered Sheffield University to read engineering in 1919, graduating in mechanical and electrical engineering in 1924.  The following year he became assistant to the Clonmel borough surveyor, James Thomas Walsh.   He was appointed acting borough surveyor in 1927, after a brief spell on the Shannon Hydroelectric Scheme.   In 1929 he took up the post of borough surveyor of Wexford town.   He moved to Co. Cork In 1931 on being appointed chief assistant county surveyor and remained there for the rest of his career, as one of two acting county surveyors from January 1940 and as one of three deputy county engineers from April 1947 until his retirement in 1957.

All information in this entry is from Brendan O'Donoghue, The Irish County Surveyors 1834-1944 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007), 273.