Search Results for 'Jack Keogh'

Lenaboy is the name of one of the townlands of Salthill. It derives either from the Irish Léana Buí, the yellow fields/land or Léana Báite, the sunken or drowned land. The latter explanation is the most likely as we look at this photograph of “The Cinema Site” taken from the main road at Kingshill in Salthill. It was so-called locally because James Stewart & Co tried to build a cinema there in the 1940s. Unfortunately, because of the boggy nature of the ground, the pylons they were sinking in order to put in a foundation kept sinking and disappearing and so the project was abandoned. In the 1960s an enormous amount of filling was gradually put into the site, and eventually, John King built a block of apartments there.

Mrs Holmes was a relation of the O’Hara-Burkes who owned Lenaboy Castle and the Lenaboy Estate. She persuaded them to sell some of their land, ‘the lower pasturelands’ farthest away from the house, down near the gates of the estate to be precise. There, she built the house in our photograph, which became known as Greenmount. She ran it as a B&B but eventually it became too big for her and she converted some farm buildings in what we now know as Lenaboy Park and built herself a small house.

The first concerted move to improve Salthill (that I know of) was in 1882 when funds were collected locally and the Salthill Improvement Company was set up to improve the resort. The prevention of pollution was a priority. The company had its ups and downs and eventually died off. The first meeting of the Galway Urban District Council in 1925 had a deputation from Salthill who listed proposed improvements, In the 1930s a Salthill Development Committee was set up.