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Old Galway
LENABOY AVENUE, c.1890
by Tom Kenny
This photograph was taken from the top of Dalysfort Road (which seems to have been little more than a track at the time) and shows Lenaboy Avenue at the bottom of the hill and part of the main Salthill Road in the distance. Most of the buildings in the Avenue were part of the Whaley Estate. Many of the occupants were fishermen and many of them had seaweed rights which were quite valuable at the time. The avenue was a main pathway to the shore for people living inland at the time.
AN OLD GALWAY TAXI RANK
by Tom Kenny
The word hackney derives from the place name Hackney in London which supplied horses from the surrounding meadows. An ordinance for the regulation of hackney-coachmen in London was approved by the English Parliament in 1654 to ‘remedy the many inconveniences (that) do daily arise by reason of the late increase and great irregularity of coaches and coachmen.’ The first hackney-carriage licences date from 1662. Licences applied literally to horse-drawn carriages, later modernised to ‘hansom cabs’ that operated as vehicles for hire.
SEVEN WONDERS
by Tom Kenny
I was asked a question some time ago that stopped me in my tracks, “What, for you, would be the seven wonders of Galway”? It made me think long and hard and I decided to draw up a list. It might be the sunrise on the bay on December mornings, the sunset on the bay on November evenings, the atmosphere on the streets, hearing Irish spoken on the streets, Druid, An Taidhbhearc, The Pádraic Ó Conaire statue, the tower at Blackrock, the Saturday market, the River Walk, Lynch’s Castle, The Arts Festival, Galway Oysters, the Garden of Remembrance, Cúirt and so on. All of these are important to me, a source of joy to me, parts of the fabric that make up this city I am proud to live in.
GREALISHTOWN, A BRIEF HISTORY
by Tom Kenny
Grealishtown is the terrace of houses on the Bohermore Road opposite the New Cemetery. This was the main road into Galway from the east, An Bóthar Mór and it is probably as old as Galway itself. There were major fortifications in the area during Cromwellian times and there was a lot of military activity in the vicinity at the time. The new cemetery walls and chapels were completed by Thomas Nugent in 1880, and this part of the road was referred to as ‘Cemetery Hill’ for a time.
The Seven Wonders of Galway
I was asked a question some time ago that stopped me in my tracks, “What, for you, would be the seven wonders of Galway”? It made me think long and hard and I decided to draw up a list.
HYNES’ SHOP, A BRIEF HISTORY
by Tom Kenny
In the 1920’s a family named Healy from College Road built three houses on Forster Street. The owner of the first house (next door to Harry Clare’s stone mason’s yard) was a Jewish man named Isaac. He did piano repairs and his daughter was an opera singer. He worked from a shed at the back of the house. In the 1930’s, he sold the house to John McDonagh from Glann near Oughterard who was married to Mary Anne Spellman from Fermoyle. They opened a grocery shop and a lending library.
THE GALWAY CAROL SINGERS
by Tom Kenny
The Galway Carol Singers were formed in the late 1930’s by members of the Junior Conference of the St. Vincent de Paul. It was Benny Brennan from West House who got the idea originally and then a committee was formed from various conferences in town. It included Robert Pierce, Joe Lardner, Paddy Donoghue, Mattie Fahy, John Fahy, Pádraic Spelman and Peter Griffin. The idea was for the singers to raise much needed funds for the Society.
The Galway Carol Singers
The Galway Carol Singers were formed in the late 1930’s by members of the Junior Conference of the St. Vincent de Paul.