Search Results for 'the Connacht Tribune'

Fifty years ago this weekend, on October 1 1966 to be precise, the last issue of the Galway Observer newspaper was published. It was founded in 1881, published on a Thursday (which was a half day in Galway) and circulated extensively in the city and county. In 1905 it declared itself as the “official advertising medium for the following public bodies – The Galway County Council, The Galway Town Council, Galway Rural District Council and Board of Guardians, Loughrea Rural District Council and Board of Guardians, Gort Rural District Council and Board of Guardians, Clifden Rural District Council and Board of Guardians, Galway Harbour Board, etc, etc.

It is that time of year again and the countdown is on to the Clarenbridge Oyster Festival.

John O’Dowd was a Galway born printer who went to work in Kilkenny and became involved with the formation of a junior soccer league in the area. In 1931, his widowed sister, Mrs Brigid Mulryan from Woodquay, died and left four children. John gave up his Kilkenny job and returned to Galway to mind the children. He worked for a while in the Connacht Tribune and later in the Galway Printing Company.

An old Galwegian gave us this photograph of Upper Abbeygate Street as seen from the corner of Market Street. In the late 1940s the building we see down at the end on the corner of Mary Street was Tommy Hopkins, victuallers. Opposite that, at the time, at the end of Abbeygate Street was Mrs Kemple’s house. Next door was Paul Heaney’s butcher shop; Moloney’s sweet shop; Barrett’s, Mrs Barrett had a cake making business; the Shapiros lived next door, and beside their house was an archway that led in to the back of the house; Ellie Carter and her brother were next; then Miko Cunningham’s sweet shop where he sold groceries as well. The next building was known as Carter’s Halls and among those who lived there were Mick Tuite, who was known only as ‘Shoots’, the Haynes family, Mary Anne O’Toole, Michael Melia, Chrissie Melia, Rose Anne Melia (these were Mary Anne’s children), Anthony Morris, Julia Murphy, Lizzie Hehir, Martin Cunniss, and Molly Hosty and her daughter.

In 1909 Galway was at a low ebb, the population was just over 3,000, the local economy was in poor shape, the canal and the docks were not being well used commercially, the student population of UCG was 131, there was very little manufacturing, and local politics was still bedevilled by the Parnell split. There were two local newspapers, The Connacht Champion which actively supported William Smith O’Brien MP and often virulently attacked the Irish Parliamentary Party, and The Galway Express which originally supported the conservative unionist viewpoint, but which gradually became more nationalist until its premises were wrecked in 1920 by the Black and Tans.

GALWAY GETS its first taste of a scare attraction this Halloween season with CarnEvil, running throughout October in the old printing works behind the Connacht Tribune on Market Street.

HALLOWEEN FAST approaches, that time of year when ghouls, ghosts and goblins, witches and warlocks, fiends and fright-mongers, of all shapes and sizes emerge to fill mere mortals with dread and horror...and Galway is not immune from their baleful presence.

One of Ireland’s great engineering feats in the 19th century was the building of the Galway - Clifden railway. After 30 years of argument as to which was the best route, the first train steamed out of Galway to Oughterard on January 1 1895; and the final section to Clifden was finished by July of that year.