In the late 18th century, a ‘new town’ — Newtownsmyth — was built outside the town wall on the northern side. The project was undertaken by the governors of the Erasmsus Smith estate. In this suburb, a county courthouse was erected in 1815 and a town courthouse in 1824. In 1823, there were objections suggesting that there were several suitable sites ‘immediately in town’ and that it was ‘quite idle’ to lay foundations in the suburb of Newtownsmyth.
A map of the area, also known as “St Stephen’s Island” was published in 1785 which shows Newtownsmyth to consist mostly of small houses, yards, malt houses and a burial ground. In 1823, Messrs Joyce offered for lease “their extensive distillery concerns” at Newtownsmith.
On February 27, 1840, the Town Commissioners’ meeting tells us that “Mr Cooper Halliday attended, to request that the Town Commissioners would undertake of a piece of work for which the magistrates of the late special sessions had recommended — a presentment to be granted, namely a new road for Newtownsmith”.
In 1842, the Sisters of Mercy moved to their present location, St Vincent’s Convent. Fr Peter Daly built a house and church beside the convent for his own use and eventually gave both buildings to the nuns. They opened a ‘house of mercy’ for unemployed servants that year. They also opened a school which had 201 girls on the roll. In December 1846, the nuns announced that they would provide a ‘daily dinner’ for 100 pupils in the school. Ingredients were collected in a specially acquired horse and car; coarse meal from the millers; offal from the butchers; ‘broken bread and crumbs’ from the bakers and sundry alms from housekeepers.
In 1859, a Mr Somers was promoting the Newtownsmith Brewery which made ale, porter and beer. The 1873 Ordnance Survey map shows the area where the secondary school is, was occupied by a malt house, a reservoir. A meal and a flour mill owned by Mr Hugh Hannon. On the opposite side of the road, there was a corn mill and a smithy and later there was a bicycle shop owned by a Mr Barbour, who, in 1909 advertised as follows — “You can buy cheaper cycles than the Galway-made GRAND NATIONAL, but none at any price so well adapted to the rough Irish roads. We make only one quality. Price £10 10s 0d. Only the finest materials used, Ours is the only fully-equipped Cycle factory in Connaught”.
In 1888, John and James Perry, who had set up the Galway Electric Light Company, applied for permission to erect a system of poles so that they could light up the streets of Galway. They generated electricity from their Newtownsmith premises for the whole town until 1931 when the ESB took them over.
The tall building beside the ESB premises had once been a successful hosiery factory. This was quite a big employer of the day in the city, employing mostly young girls and women. They worked there from 8.30am until six o’clock with no tea breaks. They did have an hour for lunch and most of the staff went home for the break. It was very well looked after, a clean place to work, very spacious. Mr Redington (the manager ) had a big window in the office looking down on the machine operators. This was probably where this photograph was taken c1900. There were three thatched cottages nearby belonging to the Dolan, Smith and Conneely families. The ESB needed the space for expanding their buildings and eventually bought these families out.
The woollen mills were built by Fr Dooley in 1903 on the site that would later become the secondary school. He also took over three houses there and helped the tenants to leave. One of these was Mike Walsh, a boat builder. Fr Dooley got him a site for a boatbuilding shed opposite the University College Boat Club. The hours in the factory were long and the pay was not great – 18/- a week for men; 7/6d for women. The factory was taken over by Flynns of Sixmilebridge in 1940, it closed in 1957 and was burnt in 1960.
Our first photograph (courtesy of the Chetham Library, Manchester ) was taken c1865 and shows Fr Daly’s chapel and house on the right-hand side. The house had an elegant façade with carved stone dripstones over all the windows and metal bars on the ground floor ones.
