Courthouse Square, c1890

Thu, Oct 11, 2012

This interesting aspect of Courthouse Square shows the Town Hall on the left and the Convent of Mercy National School in the distance. The Mercy Sisters arrived in Galway in 1840 to a house in Lombard Street. The following year they bought Joyce’s Distillery and Mill house and stores on St Stephen’s Island together with the excellent dwelling house and offices in which Mrs Joyce resided. They converted these and opened a school there and called it St Vincent’s Academy. They were very busy during the Famine and ran three soup kitchens, one in St Vincent’s, one in Bohermore, and one in Bushypark.

In 1875 they built the primary school in our photograph on a vacant site across the road. The design was Gothic and very attractive and was built to accommodate 700 pupils. The Reverend Mother had a tunnel built under the road to connect the school and convent. English, French, arithmetic, music, domestic economy, and book-keeping were on the curriculum. In 1902, Irish was added, and from 1922-24, Pádraic Ó Conaire taught there, his aunt Sister Magdalen Conroy being a member of the community. Nora Barnacle went to school here.

Lady Gregory’s Secret, and other frailties...

Thu, Oct 04, 2012

If anyone thought that academics sharing their enthusiasm for the landscape, writers and artists associated with Coole Park, Co Galway, would be boring and stuffy, they had a surprise last weekend. There were some jaw-dropping moments when Lady Augusta Gregory’s secret love affair was revealed; and when WB Yeats went off the rails in the years following her death, and had a series of love affairs.

One hundred years of St Bridget’s Terrace

Thu, Oct 04, 2012

There can be few streets in this country that are as well documented as St Bridget’s Terrace. It was built 100 years ago on St Bridget’s Hill. The hill overlooked the town and was of great strategic and military importance. Both the Cromwellian and Williamite armies camped there when attacking Galway. During the 17th century, the hill was known as ‘Gottyganavy’. In 1710 the name had evolved to ‘Knocknegany’ and on Logan’s 1818 map of the city, it is depicted as Cnoc na Gainimhe (the Hill of Sand, or Sandpit Hill).

The most Irish of games

Thu, Sep 27, 2012

Hurling is said to be older than the recorded history of Ireland and to predate Christianity. In Seamus King’s remarkable book The History of Hurling, there is a reference from Irish verbal history of hurling being played as far back as 1,200BC in Tara, County Meath. The earliest written references to the sport in Brehon law are from the fifth century.

The Great Famine in the Claddagh

Thu, Sep 20, 2012

In March 1846, it was reported, “In the town of Galway, people were suffering under the most trying privations; not a stone of potatoes could be purchased at market for the use of 20,000 inhabitants, and in the western suburbs in the Claddagh, the fishermen have been living on half rotten potatoes.”

Swimming and diving at Blackrock

Thu, Sep 13, 2012

You can see from this turn of the century photograph why this area of Salthill would be known as Blackrock. Up until about that time there was a great tradition of fishing here. There was a small cluster of fishermen’s thatched cottages at Blackrock until the night of the Big Wind, when they were all literally blown away by the storm and the tide, forcing the occupants to move further inland.

Lower Fairhill Road, c1895

Thu, Aug 30, 2012

Lower Fairhill Road ran from Garra Glas in the heart of the Claddagh to the bridge over the canal at Dominick Street. Our photograph today, dated c1895, was taken roughly from where the traffic lights on Fr Griffin Road are today, looking towards Monroe’s.

Ashe Road, sixty years

Thu, Aug 16, 2012

An important stage in Galway’s housing drive was reached in 1952 when the Minister for Local Government, Mr P Smith, opened three housing schemes comprising 142 new houses, 12 at Ballybrit, 30 in the Claddagh, and 100 in Shantalla.

The cathedral in the square

Thu, Aug 09, 2012

“Galway, the Capital of Connacht, historic metropolis of the Tribes and one of the principal cities of Ireland, looks sad, lonely, sorrowful and dejected without a cathedral, a cathedral towering over, and proudly commanding by its majestic presence the city and its surroundings. Our beautiful plaza, the Square, and I don’t mean the Green with its shoddy rusty time-worn railings — stands as it were, already prepared — God’s Holy Acre long waiting for the Cathedral of the rising resurgent west. The railings would of course be removed making the Green a spacious foreground, and incidentally a delightful parking space, an area almost as large as the Square itself. No spot on earth is good enough for God’s House and “the place where His glory dwelleth”. The Square is the best Galway can give”.

It’s a long way from Sickeen to Sicily

Thu, Aug 02, 2012

About 1,600 miles as the crow flies. A young Galwegian found himself there in the stinking heat of July 1943. He would swap the Dyke Road for the Sunken Road, or the Sandy River for the Simeto River. For sure he would rather have been somewhere else, kicking ball in the Plots, up the Dyke Road, or swimming down at the Waterside, maybe even venturing to Cooper’s Cave... turning up in St Brendan’s with no homework done was a walk in the park compared to this.

Woodquay in 1850

Thu, Jul 26, 2012

Last week we showed you a reproduction of a painting of Woodquay which was painted by an English artist, William JC Bond, in 1850. Today, we show you two details from that painting, each one showing a side of Woodquay.

Woodquay in former times

Thu, Jul 19, 2012

William Joseph JC Bond (1833-1926) was a landscape and marine painter of the Liverpool School who was much influenced by Turner, and in the 1850s and 1860s, by the Pre-Raphaelites. His work features in a number of museums and galleries. He came to the west of Ireland on a number of occasions, we know one of his paintings was titled “Near Oranmore” and he also painted “The Galway Coast” in 1872. Our main image today is of an oil painting he did of Woodquay in 1850, and the second is a detail from that painting. He may have taken some artistic licence, but his picture underlines the importance of early artworks as historical documents in an era before photography reached Galway.

Looking over the Salmon Weir Bridge

Thu, Jul 12, 2012

This charming drawing appeared in a London newspaper called The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News which was published on October 4, 1879. It shows a group of men and boys (no females) watching the salmon waiting to go upstream. On the right is a study of a water bailiff. The drawing was made by M.F., and his accompanying text is very flowery.

St Bridget’s Terrace, one hundred years ago

Thu, Jun 14, 2012

This aerial photograph of the top of Prospect Hill (which was originally known as St Bridget’s Hill) and the beginnings of Bohermore was taken in the 1950s and was given to us by Fr Des Forde. On the left you can see part of the old County Buildings. The terrace we see to the right of our picture is St Bridget’s Terrace. Before the terrace was built, it was the site of two large reservoirs which were constructed in 1868 to supply water to the city. Water was pumped up from the Dyke Road to these reservoirs by pumps situated in the lane in the centre of our photograph, which was known as Pumpeen Lane.

A bizarre meeting on the Galway train

Thu, Jun 14, 2012

Week III

Our Lady’s Boys Club

Thu, May 31, 2012

Our photograph today is of a 1950s soccer team representing Our Lady’s Boys Club, taken in Terryland where facilities were quite primitive at the time and, as you can see, the preferred mode of transport apart from shank’s mare was cycling. The team is, back row, left to right: Patsy Burke, Richie O’Connor, Brod Long, Brendan Dowling, Paddy Power, Tommy Carr, Paddy Beatty. In front are Danny Collins, Billy Carr, John Rushe, Steve Mannion, Gus O’Connor, and Barney Birkett.

Landing fish at Blackrock

Thu, May 17, 2012

Our image today is of a painting entitled Morning – Landing Fish at Blackrock, Galway Bay by an English painter named Thomas Rose Miles dated c1895. There is probably a little artistic licence taken but it is a fascinating study of the bay which is very difficult to capture in paint. There is just a thin strip of land visible on the far side, nothing very dramatic, and of course the light and colours change constantly. The sunlit area we see on the Clare coast corresponds to Ballyvaughan and the landmass to the west of that has been darkened for artistic effect. Though they are probably not visible in this reproduction, there are a lot of fishing boats on the bay.

Eugene Daly, survivor of the Titanic

Thu, Apr 12, 2012

Eugene Daly was a 29-year-old weaver in Athlone Woollen Mills who decided to leave his job and go to America. He paid £6-19 for a third class ticket and boarded the Titanic at Queenstown. He was a piper and played native airs on board the tender on the way out to the liner. One of the survivors later sourly noted, “Looking astern from the boat deck, I often noticed how the third-class passengers were enjoying every minute of the time, a most uproarious skipping game of the mixed double was the great favourite whilst “in and out and roundabout” went a man with his bagpipes playing something that ‘faintly’ resembled an air.”

Old Sickeen

Thu, Mar 22, 2012

This photograph was taken in the early 1940s and shows a happy group of children in Sickeen. The wall at their backs was the boundary wall of St Brendan’s National School. In the background on the left are the backs of houses which fronted on to St Brendan’s Road. They were occupied by the Lillis family, the Lohan family, the Molloys – home of ‘Five Goal Molloy’ aka Sonny, Maurice O’Connell who worked in the post office, Jim Redington who later became Mayor of Galway, and Tom Walsh who was a teacher in St Brendan’s School.

Athletics in St Mary’s College

Thu, Mar 08, 2012

St Mary’s opened in 1912 with 60 boarders and 17 day boys. The first school sports there took place in 1928, and since then the college has produced many fine athletes in track and field. The first mention of All-Ireland sports in the annals of the school concerns Tom Fahy, who in 1938 set a new Irish record for the 12lb shot. In 1939 the school won its first Connacht Schools title; in 1943, it won three titles, four in 1946, and five in 1947. In that last year, one athlete, Martin Kilmartin, won three golds, and set records in both the triple jump and the long jump. In 1948 the college again won five titles, and in 1950 John Linnane set a new Irish record in the pole vault.

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