“An important addition to the accommodation for visitors in Galway is provided by the Castle Hotel. This hotel is conveniently situated in Lower Abbeygate Street, opposite the Pro-Cathedral. The proprietors claim that it is not only the newest of Galway’s hotels, but it is also the most comfortable and central tourist, family, and commercial hotel in the city, and with this contention, many who stayed there would fully agree. The Castle Hotel is within a few minutes walk from the railway station and docks. It is fully licensed. Parties are catered for.”

This extract is from a guide book to Galway published in the forties. The proprietors in question were the Powell family who also claimed to have “The most up to date equipment, beauty-rest mattresses, etc…. the food is excellent and the charges moderate…. All trains and buses met by porter…. phone Galway 137”.

Powells eventually sold the hotel to Paddy Ryan in the late fifties. Paddy had a butcher shop in Dominick Street, and he once ran in the local elections. His slogan was simple and effective “Vote PR, Vote Paddy Ryan”.

In 1845, when Sir Robert Peel was in office, an act was passed providing for the establishment of three Queen’s colleges “In order to supply the want, which has long been felt in Ireland, of an improved academical education, equally accessible to all classes of the community without religious distinction”. Three faculties were established in each… arts, law, and physic (medicine). The colleges were strictly undenominational, and the professors were forbidden by the statutes to make any statement disrespectful to the religious convictions of their classes, or to introduce political or polemical subjects.

Each of these faculties elected annually, from among its members, a dean of the faculty, who presided at its meetings and represented his faculty on the college council, which exercised the general administration of the college.

English travellers came to Ireland in great numbers during the 19th century, and Galway formed an important stop on the typical tour. The stopover invariably involved token visits to Lynch's Castle, St Nicholas' Collegiate Church, and Queen's College. A visit to the Claddagh was part of the complement of must-see places, and it eventually became one of the most written about sites in Ireland. Many of these commentators travelled the same routes, stayed in the same country houses or hotels and the resulting texts are frequently similar in both content and perspective. The sameness of description permeates many travel accounts and over the century, new information is rare.

The houses are invariably referred to as cabins or hovels or huts, or, in one exceptional case as wigwams. The people were often called wild Irish, uncivilised, or savage; their clothes described as 'rags'; the 'village' full of filth and squalour, misery, and pigs. This example was penned by Samuel Reynolds Hole in 1859, "These Claddagh people... I should imagine them to be one-third Irish, one-third Arabian and the other Zingaro, or Spanish Gypsy.... I thought I recognised in one old lady an Ojibbeway chief. They live in a village of small and miserable huts, the walls of mud and stone and for the most part windowless, “the floors damp and dirty, the roofs a mass of rotten straw and weeds. The poultry mania must be at its height for the cocks and hens roost in the parlour. But the 'swells' of the Claddagh are its pigs. They really have not only a 'landed expression' as if the place belonged to them but a supercilious gait and mien; and with an autocratic air, as though repeating to themselves the spirited verses of Mr A. Selkirk, they go in and out, whenever and wherever they please."

This photograph was taken from the first floor of The Galway Arms at 2.25pm on a summer day in 1910 when these people were processing over O’Brien’s Bridge to the site of Saint Mary’s College for the laying of the foundation stone for that school. The large crowd is being led by a group of priests all wearing birettas, followed by several RIC men. There is an interesting mix of styles on view with some women wearing patterned Galway shawls while others are sporting large fashionable hats. Virtually all of the men are wearing headgear, be they hard hats or soft caps. Notice the tramtracks.

The large building in the background was the Shambles Barracks, a British army barracks. That part of the building we see on the right was the officers’ quarters and the officers’ kitchen. There were a number of privys for officers, for soldiers, and for women just behind the high wall. The sheds which you can see on the far left of the picture were washing sheds. The barracks were rectangular in shape, built around a large parade ground. The section running along Bridge Street was the soldiers’ quarters. Bridge Street was much narrower then than it is today. The section of the barracks facing the market and St Nicholas’ included ante rooms, pantries, cells, and the mess. The other side of the complex contained the soldiers’ quarters, the cook house, a library, and stables for the officers’ horses, sheds for hay and straw, etc.