.png){kind=logo}
Old Galway
100 Years of Cinema in Galway
100 YEARS OF CINEMA IN GALWAY
The earliest reference to ‘Moving Pictures’ in Galway that I have come across dates from 1909, when “The Enterprise Animated Picture Company” came to the Court Theatre in Middle St. with their cinematography performances and variety entertainments.
The Huckster's Harvest
"The Galway races are unique in Irish Sport. For this is a real Connaught holiday. Caravans and their picturesque owners are making their trek weeks ahead. Urgent farm work is abandoned for an hour. Business and professional men; regular race-goers, hunting folk, farmers of all ranges of acreage, holiday trippers from the Eastern cities; Connemara and Aran Island men and maids who speak English
Fifty Years of Soccer in Mervue
In the mid 1950’s, the corporation began to build houses on what had been a green field site in Mervue. The first families moved into Pearse Avenue in 1955, and within a few years, the housing project we now know as ‘Old Mervue’ was completed, and many more young families had moved in. The playgrounds used by the children were the open spaces in front of Plunkett Avenue and also between McDonagh and Clarke Avenues. All kinds of games were played here, but there seemed to be an emphasis on soccer.
Bowling Green of Yesteryear
In 1883, a sub-committee of the Town Commissioners reported on the sanitary conditions of the houses in this area. Some were occupied in tenements, others were held by single families.“In none of these houses is there any provision as to water closets, privies or drains which, in itself is deplorable; but your committee feel it would be but ill discharging their duty if they stopped short
Changing Fashions, Eyre Square
There is a wonderful mix of the modern and the traditional in this photograph which was aken at the corner of Eyre Square and Rosemary Avenue in the mid 1930’s. The lady in the foreground is earing a plain black shawl, a petticoat and a ‘práiscín’ which was a heavy canvas apron worn to protect the skirt. Two others are wearing beautifully patterned shawls which must have looked very elegant and colourful. They had probably come into town to sell their wares, and then went shopping with the proceeds, and their baskets are now full. The other ladies in picture are all dressed in more ‘up
Pádraic Ó Conaire, Prince of Storytellers
"A short walk on the gravelled path and I was before the man I had come to see. There was a great peace about him as he sat there, leg crossed upon leg, hat rakish on his head, mute in the sculptured dignity of stone. Ever since I had learned the Gaelic, I had loved him, this strange man of dreams whose friends were the birds and the furry people of the wood, the wind and the small white stars."Ever since a gentlemanly Christian Brother had loaned me his books, I had hungered for the solace of the white roads that twist through the heather hills and furze-haunted fields of Banba;
Our Lady's Boys Club, A Galway Gem
This happy group of Boys Club lads was taken in the mid fifties and includes Paddy O’Connell, Dominick Curran, Seanie Flaherty, Joe Walsh, --- Harty, Tommy Gannon, Dessy Fitzpatrick, Tommy Gannon, Michael Burke, Tom Cunningham, Bartley Hynes, Tony Conboy (taking the shot), Sean McNamara, Gerry Ryan, Willie Golding, Colie Rushe, William McDonagh, Peter Folan, Leo Creane,Francis Walsh, Danny Collins, Jackie Molloy, Dominick Geary and Paddy McDonagh.The main objective of the Club (the oldest Boys Club in the country) when it was founded in 1940 was “To provide for the relief of poverty by serving homeless kids in need,
The Great Famine in Galway
Like most towns in Ireland, Galway was used to food shortages, they had occurred here in 1816, 1817, 1822, 1831, and in 1842 there were food riots in the city. Nobody, however, was prepared for what happened in 1845 when the potato crop failed. As winter approached, the situation did not seem any worse than usual, though people were concerned about food being exported from the docks while there was a shortage locally.As the full extent of the crop failure became evident,the workhouse became overcrowded, the Fever Hospital on Beggar’s Bridge (which got its name from inmates begging on the bridge)