Old Galway
SHANTALLA VILLAGE, 1945 (21 11 13)
This Remarkable photograph of Shantalla Village was taken in 1945 by Pádraic Mac Dubháin and is from the National Museum collection. You will sometimes see the place name written as Shantallow and you will hear it pronounced Shantla by people with Galway accents. It is derived from the Irish ‘Sean Talamh’, old ground, though why Shantalla should be older ground than that which surrounds it is a mystery. Maybe it is because some of the land was not being worked. Our photograph shows a cluster of thatched cottages and outhouses on the Rahoon Road, possibly near where the entrance to Highfield Park is today. It was taken from a small hill in the foreground.
NEWTOWNSMITH, c.1870 (18 07 13)
Newtownsmith was an important development outside the town wall on the northern side of the city in the late 18th and early 19th century. The project was undertaken by the Governors of the Erasmus Smith Estate. In this suburb, the county courthouse was erected between 1812 and 1815 and a little later in 1824, the town courthouse. In 1823, it was objected that there were several suitable sites for a new courthouse ‘immediately in the town’ and that it was ‘quite idle’ to lay foundations in Newtownsmith, or in any part of the suburb. Galway’s second bridge was completed in 1819 and it connected the courthouses with the new (1810) county and town gaols on Nun’s Island.
WILLIAM EVANS OF ETON (11 07 13)
William Evans of Eton (1798-1877) was the drawing master of that public school in England and was an accomplished artist who exhibited widely in London, Dublin and Paris. He made a number of visits to the west of Ireland in 1835 and 1838 where he produced a lot of studies and finished watercolours, mostly of Counties Galway and Mayo, a mixture of picturesque landscapes, market and street scenes and what might be called peasant structures and peasant portraits. Some were of Galway City and many of Conamara. One cannot be sure what brought him out to ‘the wilds’ to that very rugged terrain which would have been remote and very adventurous for an English artist at that time. He liked the parts of Ireland least visited and said that “Ireland failed to attract the pencils of the recording brethren of the easel and lay like a virgin soil untouched by the plough”.
OUR LADY’S BOYS CLUB, A BRIEF HISTORY (04 07 13)
When OLBC was founded in 1940, the Government provided no out of school education for young people. There was a great need for social and recreational facilities. Such activity was virtually non-existent in the working class areas of Bohermore, Shantalla, The Claddagh and ‘The West’. The critical core of the club was (and is) its generic youth club which met (and still meets) several evenings a week. The primary aim in those days was to show the boys ways and means of securing their own destiny.
AN HOUR TO REMEMBER (27 06 13)
It is hard to believe that president John F. Kennedy’s visit to Galway only lasted one hour. It was timed with military precision and yet JFK seemed remarkably relaxed and enjoying himself thoroughly throughout. He landed by helicopter in the Sportsground where he was met by the Mayor, Paddy Ryan, a group of schoolgirls from the Mercy National school all dressed in green white and gold, some members of the American legion, and a crowd of enthusiastic onlookers.An open Cadillac led a procession of cars with Garda outriders down College Road. JFK got out of his car to talk to Paddy Ryan’s mother who was sitting at her gate.
SALTHILL CHURCH, A BRIEF HISTORY (20 06 13)
A meeting of the residents of the Salthill area was held in the Pavilion Ballroom in June 1934 for the purposes of considering the necessity of erecting a church in Salthill. They unanimously expressed the urgency of building one to cater for the religious needs of about 300 families representing approximately 400 residents and a large number of summer visitors. At that time there were about 200 families from the Bishop’s Gate to Rockbarton and there was provision made for the building of close on 100 houses.
THE CLADDAGH NATIONAL SCHOOL (13 06 13)
An advertisement in the Irish Independent in July 1931 invited tenders from competent builders for the erection and completion of the proposed new St. Nicholas National School in the Claddagh. When the new school was built it was described as “An attractive rectangular building with a red tile roof made by the Galway Brick and Tile Company”. The outdoor toilets were at the end of the playground.
WHERE THERE’S A WILL, THERE’S A WAY (06 06 13)
Now that the Leaving Certificate Exams are about to start and the rowing season is in full swing, we thought to share the following story.
St. Joseph’s secondary school rowing club first competed in 1932 when they beat St. Patrick’s in the schoolboy fours. They soon became a force in rowing but in the early 1950’s, the club was at a low ebb. They had no clubhouse, no equipment and no coach.A few of the boys who were not involved in any other sport got together and decided to start a crew.