Markets and fairs were where town met country years ago, when rural people from the hinterland came into town with their produce and sold it on the streets to the townspeople who needed it. So the city hosted cattle fairs, sheep fairs, horse fairs, hiring fairs, vegetable markets, hay markets, fish markets, sock markets, fowl markets, egg and butter markets. When the country people sold their produce, they would often spend money on necessities they could not produce at home such as flour, tea or sugar. If they did not sell, they had to return home, usually by shank’s mare, with whatever they had to sell, whatever the weather.
Woodquay was one of the many sites for markets in Galway. What made it different was that many of the participants came down the river by boat to show and sell their wares. The main commercial traffic that came in by river was turf, wood and timber, all to be sold in the city, but the boats also carried frieze, linen, cloth, broad cloth, butter, corn, grain, honey, eggs and poultry. In earlier times, animals would also have been transported to the fairs in the city but the Anach Cuain disaster probably put paid to that kind of traffic. Woodquay was also the location for selling produce brought in by land from Menlo or the Headford Road.
Goods for sale coming into the city had to pay a toll at various entrances (known as ‘gaps’ ). Toll booths were situated at Forster Street, Merchant’s Quay, Bohermore Gap, West Crane, Railway Gap, Newcastle Gap and Woodquay. The toll booth at Woodquay can be seen in front of the park to the far left of our first photograph. The tolls collected here for October 1903 amounted to £36 17s 9d, and for April 1904, £48 3s 10d. Long ago there was a charge of one farthing on each hide of ox, cow, horse or mare, fresh or tanned. A halfpenny was charged for every 100 skins of wolves, squirrels, wildcats or hares. The charge for a horse load of fish was a penny, and for a salmon, it was a farthing.
There was a small crane just out of picture to the left of the toll booth which was used for weighing potatoes. You can see some of the houses on Corrib Terrace in the background. The people we see in that image were selling scallops for thatching, ‘flexible sticks’ cut from hazel trees. These were very much in demand as so many houses in the city, including Woodquay were thatched. The man who is seated on the left was a basket maker who would weave creels, ciseáins, skibs and baskets of many shapes and sizes for sale to the public. Often, his customers would buy a basket to take home the produce they had bought at the market. This photograph was originally taken by Kevin Danaher c1935 and is shown courtesy of the Irish Folklore Commission.
Our second photograph was taken at the upper end of Woodquay, near the corner of Eyre Street. It dates from 1902 and was taken from roughly where McSwiggan’s is today. This area was the scene of the egg and butter market where women brought in baskets of eggs their hens had laid, or wrapped slabs of ‘country’ butter, butter they had made at home. This was usually a bit slatier and much richer than the butter we buy in the supermarket today. Eventually, the Health and Safety people began to put pressure on these women to install all sorts of new equipment in their kitchens in order to be able to sell their butter and so the tradition died out. I still miss the taste of it though.
The bodies of the carts we see would have been painted bright blue, while the shafts were painted red. The animal pulling the cart was generally an ass or an un-groomed pony. The harness was usually made up of rope with old bits of leather here and there.
The derelict site behind the women was later built on and became Creavin’s Boot Shop. The building next to it was Miss Paisley’s boarding house and beside that was O’Halloran’s. Next to that was Dooley’s shop and yard. They had a mineral water company here and a natural well on the premises. They also made pikes and pitchforks. Beyond that was Murphy’s Pub, then Tim Lally’s Pub and then Glynn’s house.
This photograph was kindly given to us by the Library of Congress in Washington.
By the 1960s, the Woodquay market was in decline and by the 1980s there were only a handful of traders making a weekly appearance there, and so another local tradition gradually faded away.
