Old Galway
THE DOMINICAN NUNS IN GALWAY
by Tom Kenny
The first Dominican Nunnery in Galway was founded 380 years ago, in 1644, in New Tower Street, now known as Augustine Street. They were honoured with a visit from Papal Nuncio Rinucinni three years later. When the Cromwellians took over the city, the sisters were faced with two alternatives, to renounce their religious life and return to their families or exile. They choose the latter and left for Spanish monasteries.
In 1686, two sisters returned to Galway and John Kirwan, the mayor, offered them his house, “A fine stone house in the Jacobean style with a large courtyard” in Kirwan’s Lane. They began to build a community and did so successfully. However, they were once again dispersed in 1698. They remained in town and after some years were allowed to reassemble for a while but they were scattered again in January 1716 when the convent was used as a barracks to house a company of Brigadier Harrison’s regiment. The sisters were back by November of that year.
GALWAY DOMINICANS, A BRIEF HISTORY
by Tom Kenny
The Dominican Order was formally approved by Pope Honorius III in 1216, “to witness to the truth of the Christian Faith and to proclaim it at home and abroad”. St. Dominic died in 1216 and in 1224, the Dominicans first came to Ireland. They came to Connacht, to Athenry, in 1241, and they finally arrived in Galway in 1488.
They took possession of the Church of St. Mary on the Hill, an abandoned chapel outside the walls and later the priory became known as the ‘West Convent’ or ‘St. Mary’s outside the Gates’. In 1570, Elizabeth I declared the Order illegal and they dispersed though they continued to exercise a pastoral ministry in Galway. In 1617, they were back in the Claddagh. In 1641, Lord Forbes landed in Galway Bay with an expeditionary force and erected batteries at the Dominican church in an effort to capture the city.
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.