So much has changed since this photograph was taken, it is hard to know where to start. Most of the buildings on Spanish Parade have been demolished and replaced, and the car park there has been pedestrianised. Flaherty Markets were in business on Long Walk at the time. As you move around the end of Long Walk towards the docks, all of the buildings there have been replaced by apartment blocks.
The long building on the western dockside has been demolished and virtually all of the buildings along there have been replaced with blocks of apartments and offices. The same is true along Dock Road. Most of warehouses fronting the docks are long gone and are now converted into offices or apartments.
The docks were being dredged at the time. When they sealed and drained the dock, they built ramps from the road down to the floor of the dock to allow various types of machines down to start the digging out and deepening process. There seemed to be a fleet of large carriers used to ferry rocks and boulders out of the space. Many will remember these vehicles on the streets at the time. Most of the material they dredged up was taken around the corner to begin filling in along the seashore opposite Forthill Cemetery. This made the Lough Athalia residents nervous who feared that the build up of rocks there would block the flow of water into and out of Lough Athalia and therefore cause more and more sewage to accumulate in the lough, which might cause diseases and be injurious to health in the area. Their protests were heeded and the flow was unaffected as the infilling continued.
The so-called McDonough’s corner, which was in fact a semi-circle leading on to Lough Athalia Road has gone, as has the former coal yard next to it. They have been replaced by an apartment block. The old gasworks site at the end of the docks has been transformed by the erection of three multi-storey buildings, two office blocks and one which will become student accommodation.
In the distance, along the coast, you can see Deadman’s Bay and the beach at Ballyloughane, and just about visible are the empty spaces and fields that make up the suburb that is Renmore today.
This photograph points out to us just how much the city has changed in the last sixty years. It is just one of 45 aerial images that make up an exhibition called Old Galway, a Birds-eye View that is currently on display in the Kenny Art Gallery in Liosbán, and which illustrates the vast changes in the city in the last number of years. Of particular interest in this collection are the empty spaces, the stone walls and green fields that have all been developed since and are today covered in roads and housing.
This show is a unique look at Old Galway and should not be missed.
