The following are some of the fires that occurred in the city in the last century.

1902: A thatched house in Salthill belonging to 85-year-old Barbara Molloy, known as ‘Babs of the Baths’, in which Babs sadly died, was burnt out.

1910: The fire which destroyed Menlo Castle.

1915: Messrs Cloherty & Co, ironmongers, seed, oil and ammunition merchants.

1921: St Patrick’s House, a Sinn Féin hall (where the Union Hall was later) was set on fire (and gutted) by the Black and Tans. The fire spread to a row of thatched houses across the street but the locals managed to save these by dousing the roofs with water and wet sacks all night.

1928: Two thatched houses at the Grattan Road end of Fairhill were destroyed. The wind blew the flames away from the other houses in the vicinity.

1932: Villa Maria in Salthill, property of Miss O’Brien, was destroyed. The fire brigade saved adjoining buildings.

1934: The Connaught Buildings in Mainguard Street belonging to Connolly’s was badly damaged. A number of people escaped from upstairs apartments and Hennigan’s fruit and vegetable shop, and the first floor tailoring business of the McDonnell brothers was destroyed.

1951: The four-floor Hygeia building on Nuns Island was gutted in three hours. Firemen succeeded in saving McDonogh’s Milling & Trading Company and a timber store belonging to Galway Foundry, though they were badly hampered by sulphur fumes.

1952: Brennan’s in Shop Street, and Commins & Greaney next door, destroyed. In that year also there was a fire in Murray’s Wholesalers in Victoria Place. Firemen confined the blaze to that building and saved the rest of the block. They had just returned to the station when they were called to another blaze in the Galway Woollen Mills, Newtownsmyth. Jimmy Conneely, the coffinmaker from next door, had to evacuate his family, but they were able to return when the fire was brought under control.

1964: The Sancta Maria Hotel on St Mary’s Road was gutted with the loss of three lives.

1967: A major fire in Mainguard Street destroyed O’Neill’s Boot Shop, O’Donnell’s Pharmacy, the Genoa Bar, and Hollands Newsagents.

1971: What became known as McDonogh’s fire was probably the most devastating fire of the century, levelling a huge section of the city between Merchants Road and Williamsgate Street, including Corbett’s shop and a lot of old warehouses. Many of these were built of wooden struts and had felt roofs, and as they contained 3,000 tons of timber and 5,000 tons of coal they represented a nightmare for the fire services. They, however, managed to contain the conflagration which threatened to jump streets and destroy even more of the city centre.

Hardiman tells us, “There was from time immemorial a gap in the river called the Main Gap, through which small boats, sometimes with difficulty, passed up and down the river from the lake to the sea. This particular gap was always kept open from February to August, when all others were shut. The proprietors of the fishery, finding that it diminished the value of the weirs, caused it to be closed. This became the subject of legal contention, but it was finally decided that the gap should be, and it has ever since accordingly been, kept open.”

Our photograph today (courtesy of the National Library) was originally taken c1865 and shows workmen taking salmon from the gap, which at that time was officially known as the King’s Gap or the Queen’s Gap depending on whatever monarch was in power. It was known locally as The Salmon Traps or The Cribs and was designed as a weir used to trap salmon for commercial sale up to 1998.

Fishing was always important on the river. Ownership of this stretch of water took on great significance c1260-1270 when Henry III granted it to the Earls of Ulster. Over the next few centuries ownership swung between the Crown and the De Burgos, both of whom made substantial profits granting licences to the merchant families of the town for fishing along this stretch.

A report on Galway Bay and Harbour published by the House of Commons in 1838 makes for interesting reading.

“Galway is a tide harbour, the quays on both sides of the river being dry at low water. The rise and fall in ordinary spring tides is fourteen feet.

Galway Roads is the only place where a vessel can lie afloat at low water. It lies to the south-east of Mutton Island, and has from three to six fathoms good holding ground.

At present this roadstead is exposed to south-west gales, and requires a breakwater to be run out from the south end of Mutton Island to protect it. The breakwater would not extend more than two cables’ length to the southward of Mutton Island, to embrace a good anchorage with four fathoms at low water spring tides.

Mutton Island is steep too, an excellent quay might be constructed at a moderate expense, along its southern beach, connecting the minor part of the breakwater with Slate Quay [now Nimmo’s Pier], now forming the larboard entrance into the river.