There is a wonderful mix of the modern and the traditional in this photograph which was taken at the corner of Eyre Square and Rosemary Avenue in the mid 1930s. The woman in the foreground is wearing 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 women in the picture are all dressed in more ‘up to date’ coats and berets. It looks as if all of these people are waiting for a bus.

The photograph was taken from outside Hayes McCoy’s Hairdressing Rooms. The weighing scales in the foreground told you how heavy you were when you put a penny in the slot. These scales were quite common before bathroom scales were invented. The men we see on the right were sitting on the windowsill of what was once the offices of The Galway Pilot, and was later occupied by Norwich Union.

Next door was James Ward’s garage. You can see the three petrol pumps (which must have been 10 feet high) outside the door on the edge of the footpath. The first petrol pumps to come to Galway were placed inside the door of this garage in 1918. The first mechanic to work there was Jim Bowen from Mary Street. At one stage, the Black and Tans brought in a number of Crossley tenders for servicing, one of the mechanics there completely immobilised them and then went ‘on the run’ until the truce.

This photograph was taken in the late seventies, and shows how quickly streetscapes can change. Merchants Road was originally known as ‘Back Street’ because it was at the back of (outside) the old city walls. As the docks were developed, a lot of warehousing and industrial buildings were constructed around the area to facilitate companies who were importing and exporting from the port, and so Merchants Road came into being. It was a drab street, quite a bit of the area we see in the foreground was warehousing, like the tall building we see in the centre of our picture.

All of that was to drastically change on the morning of August 16 1971 when a huge fire broke out and swept through a large block of the city centre. It was noticed for the first time at about 11.30am on that Monday. It began in an area to the right of our photograph, almost opposite where the tourist office used to be. Nobody knows what started it though there were many theories at the time — an electrical fault, a carelessly dropped match or cigarette butt maybe. Whatever the cause, the fire very quickly spread and became an inferno.

The area we know today as Highfield Park was originally a place of green fields and rocky granite outcrops and it was ‘out in the country’. There were very few people living there. Mostly situated in the townland of Rahoon (Rath Ún or Ún’s Fort), it was bordered by two of the main roads into Galway, the Taylor’s Hill road and the Rahoon road. There was a small granite quarry there, (near the grounds of St Helen’s) and a couple of stone turrets which probably served as watchtowers.

In the 1880s the Shantalla Quarry was started by a man named Millar between Maunsells Road and Highfield. He employed about 20 men there to extract fine grained red and pink coloured granite. It was known locally as the Bermingham Quarry, probably after a local family. In 1911 an extension to the Galway-Clifden Railway line was built to service this quarry. It connected with the main line at Distillery Road, went through a railway crossing at Newcastle Road, proceeded along Séamus Quirke Road through another level crossing at Rahoon Road, and terminated at New Avenue. Soon after the railway siding was completed, the quarry became beset with problems and was eventually abandoned. The enclosures filled with water, became deep pools and very dangerous. Later these were filled in by rubble from the old gaol.

What we know as Salthill Park was originally a large field with a small lake. It was landscaped in 1907. In 1925 the Salthill Development Organisation (SDO) asked the corporation to clean up a cesspool there, but that took some years. In 1924, three councillors, Mr Bailey, Eyre Square, Martin Cooke, and John Coogan, bought an aeroplane hangar for the urban council for £400. It had been used by the RAF in Oranmore and was re-erected it in the park. It was called the Pavilion Ballroom, but everyone knew it as ‘the Hangar’.

In the mid-forties the SDO rented it from the corporation and ran it for a number of years. In total the SDO paid rent of £5,112 to the corporation and handed over the profit it made of £10,579 9s 6d which was to be used solely in the development of Salthill. The principal aim was to clear the foreshore and create a strand, to erect a breakwater pier, and provide proper bathing facilities. The resident band in the Hangar at the time was run by Johnny Cox. They made up their own songs….