Irish hotelier Tom Moran left over €21m in his will
He was just 19 when he secured his first pub from a brewery after pretending he was 23
Mr Moran died in March last year at the age of 72. During his career, which spanned more than 50 years, he built and lost an empire but he never lost his positivity. He grew up on a farm in Toureen Donnell near Athea in west Limerick and left school to work as an apprentice coffin-maker in Listowel before emigrating to London aged 16, where he met Sheila Cleary who later become his wife.He was just 19 when he secured his first pub from a brewery after pretending he was 23. At the time he was believed to be the youngest ever pub licensee in the UK.Mr Moran and his wife went on to run several popular pubs and with their savings they bought run-down flats, renovated them and rented them out.He had no ID or chequebook so he frantically called his bank manager and solicitor to seal the dealEventually, they saved enough money to move home and start a new life in Ireland with their children.They arrived in Limerick in 1980 and bought the Top of the Town pub.In 1988 fate intervened when a friend asked Mr Moran to accompany him to the auction of the Red Cow Inn on Dublin’s Naas Road. When the bidding war started and the price headed towards £1m, Mr Moran fought for the prize.The hammer came down at £1,010,000, (almost €1.3m), making him the first person to pay more than £1m for a pub in Ireland.He had no ID or chequebook so he frantically called his bank manager and solicitor to seal the deal. He went on to expand his collection of pubs to include the Playwright and the Mad Hatter in Blackrock and the Pier House in Skerries among others. In 1996, after more than two decades in the pub business, he opened his first hotel on the grounds of the Red Cow Inn, which he called the Red Cow Moran Hotel.The business did so well that he decided to sell all the pubs, apart from the Red Cow Inn, and focus on hotels. He bought London’s Crown pub in Cricklewood in 1998 to develop it into a hotel and later bought the Silver Springs Hotel in Cork and opened the Chiswick Moran Hotel in London.But his good fortune was interrupted when he bought the six Bewley’s hotels in Dublin and the UK for €570m in 2007 just before the property bubble burst. He later recalled in an interview with The Irish Times: “Even my accountant and the banks thought it was the deal of the century… we didn’t see the recession coming.”He spent a year in St James’s Hospital learning how to talk and walk againBut speaking to the Sunday Independent at the Galway races in 2009 he described how even in the heady days he never lived a flash lifestyle.“We never went with the high-flyers. It’s not in my nature. It wasn’t what I was brought up to do,” he said. “It’s easier if you’re not flash when you fall because nobody cares but if you’re a high-flyer and you fall it’s different.”Asked about his most difficult time, he replied: “I suppose when the recession hit, for the first few weeks I thought ‘why the hell did I bother climbing as high as I did? Why didn’t I stay where I was?’”Still he remained positive.“I think it will get tougher… but we’re in a prime location so I’m confident we’ll survive,” he said.In 2015 he sold all the hotels to Dalata with the exception of the Red Cow Moran Hotel, the jewel in his crown.A year later he had a stroke and fell in Spain. He sustained a serious head injury and was placed in an induced coma. He spent a year in St James’s Hospital learning how to talk and walk again.Paying tribute after his death, the former mayor of Limerick Cllr Liam Galvin said Mr Moran may have mixed with millionaires, but he was always very down to earth.“He spoke the ordinary language that the ordinary people of Ireland speak. That’s the way he was — he was just a gentleman,” he said.
