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Old Galway
CUNNINGHAM’S BUTCHER SHOP
by Tom Kenny
This superb image of Martin Cunningham’s butcher shop at Number 10, Shop Street was taken c.1900. In the 1901 census, the occupants of this building are listed as Martin Cunningham, aged 50; his wife Delia aged 30 and their children Michael aged 12, Mary Margaret 7, James 3, Delia 2 and Martin J. who had just been born. The family lived over the shop.
Martin Cunningham ran exactly the same advertisement in local newspapers over a number of years between 1899 and 1902. A sample of it, published in 1902, is illustrated here.
THE ATLANTA HOTEL
by Tom Kenny
Joseph Owens lived in Glenamaddy with his wife who was born Annie M. Tuohy. They had three children, Dick, Mary and her twin Joseph (born February 4th, 1912) who was known to one and all as Josie. The father died very young. Annie remarried, this time to a man named Doorly, and in 1922, the family bought a four-bay four-storey early 19th century house in Lower Dominick Street from Nora O’Donnell and moved to Galway. Annie was a busy woman, she opened a drapery shop where she designed clothes, made them and sold them in her shop, and she kept lodgers upstairs, all as she was rearing her children.
GALWAY RAILWAY STATION
by Tom Kenny
The station opened on August 1st, 1851. The buildings and the Great Southern Hotel were designed by John Skipton Mulvany. It was originally planned to have the station at Renmore, but the well-known Father Peter Daly convinced the railway authorities to construct Lough Athalia Bridge and bring the trains into the centre of town. The fact that he owned tenement buildings on the site where the Great Southern was built may well have had something to do with it. These tenements were levelled to make way for the hotel and station.
The station interior looked completely different then. There were four tracks under the roof, one for arrivals, one for departures and two storage roads. The roof was designed by the famous Richard Turner of Hammersmith Works in Ballsbridge. He was well-known for his work on the Palm House at Kew and also at the Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin. The roof had an 80 foot span and wrought iron ribs, tie bars and sheets. The centre section was glazed with heavy plate glass and the sides were of corrugated iron, an early use of this material in the west of Ireland.
THE PATRICIAN MUSICAL SOCIETY
by Tom Kenny
On this day, the 29th of February, 1952, a meeting was held in the Bish the purpose of which was “that a choral Society titled the Patrician Choral Society under the auspices of the Patrician Brothers Past-Pupils’ Union be here and now formed”. The motion was proposed, seconded and passed unanimously. Jack Browne was elected President, Thomas Lydon as Vice-President, Jack Doherty and Brother Cuthbert as directors and Jack Begley as Treasurer.
Towards the end of the 1940s, the Department of Education had sanctioned the building of the present St.Patrick’s School on a site then known as The Shambles. However, £20,000 of the cost had to be raised locally and so several functions were organised locally in order to raise funds … a 20-week draw, pantomimes, dramas and especially concerts by visiting artists. Brother Cuthbert was asked to prepare a choir to sing at these concerts and he formed one with 100 boys from the Monastery School, the Bish Primary and St. Joseph’s College. They were called the Patrician Brothers Boys Choir. They sang at these concerts, they made a 78 record and were recorded by Radio Éireann. Brother Cuthbert was now suggesting that it was time for Galway to step into the musical world by forming a musical society, and as a result the above-mentioned meeting came about.
THE GALWAY & SALTHILL TRAMWAY COMPANY
by Tom Kenny
The mid-nineteenth century was an era of little movement of people for social or pleasure purposes. In the post-Famine era, it was only business people of necessity, those who were emigrating or those whose financial circumstances allowed who travelled. Railway travel had come to Galway in 1851 and there were a few horse-drawn omnibuses operating between the city and the village of Salthill which was really a rural backwater. But, it was becoming a fashionable place to live and was developing as a tourist destination. It was therefore no surprise when a tramway system between the city and the village was proposed.
The Galway and Salthill Tramway Company Ltd. was incorporated in 1876 and applied for consent to construct a line linking the two areas. The line was to run from Eyre Square to what was then known as Blackrock Road in Salthill (The Prom today). One hundred men were employed in Menlo Quarry at 12 shillings a week to prepare limestone setts on which the track would be laid. These eventually proved to be inefficient and were replaced by granite setts.
The line was single track with passing places, roughly 250 yards apart, at Eyre Square corner with Williamsgate Street. West Bridge, Lower Dominick Street, William Street West, Montpelier corner, Lower Salthill, at the Ballinasloe Public House and at the Blackrock Road terminus. The works on the line would greatly enhance the roadway along the way.
THE CHURCH OF CHRIST THE KING
by Tom Kenny
Around the year 1930, there were about 400 residents in Salthill and it was attracting large number of visitors and tourists who came in the summer. There was provision at the time for the building of some one hundred homes. The population was growing but there was no church in the area. Any resident or tourist who wished to go to mass had to travel into the Jesuit Church or St. Joseph’s, or out west to the chapel in Barna.
And so, in June 1934, a meeting of residents was convened in the Hangar Ballroom to consider the necessity of a church in Salthill. It was felt that Salthill required a moral influence and a church would provide that. Canon Nestor said a church would attract many people to Salthill, especially old people and invalids who would be sent here by doctors. Canon Davis suggested the placing of collection boxes in hotels and lodging houses in the district. They seemed to give the impression that tourists would pay for the construction, whereas it was the locals who actually did so.
THE KING OF THE CLADDAGH
by Tom Kenny
James Hardiman, the Galway historian, wrote the following in 1820, “This colony has from time immemorial been ruled by one of their own body, periodically elected. This individual, who is dignified with the title of Mayor, in imitation of the head municipal officer of the town, regulates the community according to their own peculiar laws and customs, and settles all their fishery disputes. His decisions are so decisive, and much respected that the parties are seldom known to carry their differences before a legal tribunal, or to trouble the legal magistrates”.
In the 1840s, Mr. & Mrs. Hall published a book of their travels in which they wrote about this officer of the Claddagh as follows: “This singular community are still governed by a king, elected annually -- at one time this king was absolute – as powerful as a veritable despot but his power yielded like all despotic powers so now he was more like the Lord Mayor of Dublin”. This book was very popular and so the idea of a King of the Claddagh became widespread. Before that the king was known as The Admiral (of the fleet) when he was at sea, and as the Mayor when he was on land. Owen Concannon, who later was given the title of King said “There was never a King of the Claddagh, away back in the old days, there was a man named Owen King fishing out of the Claddagh and he was the best man in the boats or at the nets or for racing or for working and when those writers heard about King of the Claddagh, they thought, God help them, that it was a real king that was in it”. Owen preferred to be called the Claddagh Chieftain.
WALKIN’, TALKIN’ AND TOUCHIN’
by Tom Kenny
‘Mate’ Lydon was a Galway original, a character, a champion salmon snatcher and a great judge of porter. He was born in Rope Walk in the Claddagh in 1908. His name was Martin Lydon, but because he spent much of his childhood in his grandmother’s house, he was known locally as Máirtín Harte. He attended the Claddagh National School. He loved hurling, became a very good soccer player and was a regular on the famous Claddonians team which won the first ever Schweppes Cup in 1937. Our first image shows that team; seated Joe Flaherty, jack O’Donnell, Martin Lydon, Bob Cantwell, Gus Flaherty,Thomas Lydon. Standing are Jimmy Connell, Martin Connell, Paddy Cubbard, Dick Ebbs, Jack Connor, Frank Fitzgerald & Eddie Cloherty. Mate usually played full back, and opposing forwards often found they had to take ‘the long way round’ to the Claddonians goal.
He worked for about fifteen years in the foundry in Mill Street. A very good ironworker, making beautiful gates was his speciality. He subsequently worked on the docks for about twenty years. In the meantime, he put in a lot of practise at the art of salmon snatching. This often resulted in a visit to ‘Limerick University’, ie. Limerick Gaol. When he got to know the lads (wardens) they got him to do an odd small job around the place. One day they asked him to sweep up the leaves outside the prison. He finished the job and knocked on the prison doors to be allowed back in. Nobody answered, and as he had a few bob in his pocket, he went to the nearest pub. When the publican and his clients heard Mate’s story, they stood him several drinks. He went back to the prison and spent 20 minutes banging on the door shouting “Let me in before I’m robbed out here”. It was not given to many to be locked out of jail.