This photograph of Salthill was taken about 75 years ago by Norman Ashe, a Dublin photographer who specialised in aerial photography. Most aerial images of the area were taken from the sea side but he chose the other direction.
The village extended along the main road from the Warwick Hotel (which is just out of picture on the left ) to the Eglinton Hotel on the far right. Some ‘recent’ developments are to be seen, Lenaboy Park at the bottom left of picture, Lenaboy Gardens in the centre and of course, Salthill church. Apart from Lenaboy Avenue, there were few houses off the main road, but all of that was about to change dramatically.
The main feature in this image are the empty fields. These green spaces were the playground of the young people who lived in the area at the time. The field at the back of the church contained a large hill which was originally known as Stiff’s Hill. Then Frank Hallinan bought the field and the hill became known as Hallinan’s Hill. He had a butcher shop and he kept some cattle and sheep in the field. This is where the Rock Hill estate is today.
The long field along the back of Lenaboy Gardens down to Lenaboy Park was known as Kennys field (no relation ) and it also had a hill in the middle. Alongside this field was an area of rough scrub, bushes and brambles and then a rough field that spread up to the back of Kingshill. All of this area became the site of the first housing development in the area with the construction of Emerson Avenue.
The main field in the picture was known as McGrath’s Field, sometimes called the Nun’s Field. It was relatively flat and was used by the local youth to practise their football and hurling skills. This would become the kind of pitch where one used jumpers as goalposts a few years later for unofficial games between the soon to be built estates of Devon Park and Árd na Mara and the local Salthill boys. The one problem with the pitch was the telephone poles that were in the middle. This is where the Oaklands estate is today.
The row of cottages that make up Lenaboy Avenue is one of the oldest parts of Salthill. They were mostly occupied by local fishermen. It was also an important right of way for farmers living in further from the sea as they made their way to the shore to collect seaweed to be used as fertiliser.
The row of houses that is Lenaboy Gardens had been constructed in the 1930s. There are three houses just to the west of it. The white building on the left was the first house built by Tom Dunleavy which he later expanded into the Sacre Coeur Hotel. The other two houses were occupied by the McMenamin and Reid families.
There are just a couple of buildings at the back of the church, where Monksfield is today.
Virtually all of the green space in our photograph is covered with buildings and roads today.
The two largest buildings in the area were actually under construction at the time – The Galway Bay Hotel on Kingshill and Seapoint Ballroom. There are many gaps in the buildings along both sides of the main road that have since been filled in with new housing. For instance, the empty space between Salthill Stores and Sarsfield’s Hotel was later occupied by Jimmy Carroll’s Service Station.
At the end of Beach Avenue, behind the Bal pub, you can see Tim Keane’s house on the shore. Pádraic Ó Conaire often stayed with him and drank with him. One night, after they had a skin-full, there was a big storm which coincided with a high tide and Pádraic woke the following morning to hear Tim crying and wailing, “All my chickens have drowned”. Pádraic’s response was “Sure amn’t I telling you for years, you should be rearing ducks”.
This image is one of an important series of aerial photographs taken by Norman Ashe who was born in the UK to Irish parents. He spent a lot of time in Roscommon and Conamara. He joined the Glider Regiment in WW2 but was wounded and evacuated from the front. He worked as a photographer in Dublin and eventually had the largest photographic studio there. He specialised in fashion, portraiture, commercial and aerial photography, taking a series of important aerial images between 1948 and 1953. He later moved to the US and died in an air crash in 1965. The negatives of his aerial photographs have been discovered recently by Patrick Kiersey and he has been very generously putting them up online. Just google Norman Ashe aerial photography to see his wonderful images from all over the country. It is a fascinating experience.
