Search Results for 'St Nicholas'

St Nicholas of Myra is the patron saint of archers, sailors, merchants, repentant thieves, brewers, pawnbrokers, unmarried people, students, and children. He is also the patron saint of Galway, and our oldest church, St Nicholas' Collegiate, is named after him. He was a legendary giver of gifts, particularly to the poor. He would hand coins in through windows or open doors, and if they were closed, sometimes he would put them down the chimney. This was the origin of the tradition of Santa coming down the chimney bearing gifts. The tradition was good for business for chimney sweeps, it would be difficult to explain soot marks on the floor on Christmas morning.

In the early decades of the 19th century fortunes were made in giving hundreds of thousands of emigrants safe passage to America. As the decades slipped by the numbers grew into millions. Liverpool had the main transatlantic business for these two islands, but Galway, situated some 300 miles closer to America, and with the onset of powerful steam-driven ships, believed that a better and quicker service could be provided.

St Nicholas’ Collegiate Church - an icon of Galway city and one of its finest historic buildings - will celebrate its 700th anniversary this year, and it plans to mark this extraordinary milestone in some style.

Fears that long-planned traffic and security arrangements for the opening ceremony of Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture might prevent city voters getting to the polling stations, have been averted after minor amendments were made last evening to the plan.

St Nicholas’ Collegiate Church - an icon of Galway city and one of its finest historic buildings - will celebrate its 700th anniversary this year, and it plans to mark this extraordinary milestone in some style.

This photograph was taken from the far side of the docks c1900 and shows New Docks Road in the distance and Bonham Quay on the right.

St Nicholas’s Collegiate church has seen many changes in the city over the hundreds of years it has stood guard over the street, but is about to experience a new one with the announcement this week that its new rector will be the first female to hold the post.

The townland in which this park is situated is known as Terryland or Tirellan, derived from the Irish Tír Oileáin (the Land of the Islands) which was so named because the river divided into many streams, thus creating islands in the area. It is in the civil parish of St Nicholas in the Barony of Galway.