Walking Tours of Galway

10/01/2025

Here’s a beautiful walk for a Sunday in spring!

07/01/2025

Something for your diary. Next Monday at 8pm in the Harbour hotel

GAHS free illustrated public lecture on THE BLAKES OF MENLO CASTLE on 13th January at 8 pm. The venue is the HARBOUR HOTEL, and the speaker is PATRICK LARKIN.

Menlo Castle sits on the banks of the river Corrib, a few miles upriver from Galway city. It was constructed as a defensive English outpost in a Gaelic world, gradually morphing over time to become a comfortable home worthy of its wealthy aristocratic owners. These were one of the merchant Tribes of Galway, the baronets Blake, ennobled for their services to the state. The castle was occupied for three and a half centuries, until a tragic accidental fire consumed the iconic building.

The speaker, Patrick Larkin is a Galway native, a graduate of University College Galway and a chartered chemist. A former president of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society, he is a widely published independent scholar with a particular interest in 13th century East Galway.

31/12/2024

30/12/2024

Such a sad occasion.. and so unnecessary! Greedy rate and rent hikes are killing off all our indigenous industry and businesses! Eimear worked so incredibly hard. Goya’s cakes were the best!

Red Velvet cake from Goyas was one of Galway’s best-kept secrets, but now the bakery that created it will be turning its ovens off.

The family business, based in the medieval street known as Kirwan’s Lane, will sell its last courgette bread and signature chocolate cakes and more on New Year’s Eve.

It is among the latest in a line of independent businesses in Galway and countrywide that have been forced to close due to high costs and lack of affordable housing for staff.

A month ago, Goyas founder Emer Murray was reporting cheerfully that staff were up to their ears in “raisins, brown sugar and bottles of Hennessy” as they prepared for Christmas.

However, a rent increase, along with struggles to keep staff, who are facing their own rental challenges, and a hike in city council rates, means this Christmas will be their last at Kirwan’s Lane, she says.

“I’m not doing this out of choice,” Ms Murray, who founded the bakery 33 years ago, explains. “I have been overwhelmed by the reaction since I had to announce this, and I hate to see people so upset because of it.”
A recent rent review will push rent up substantially, she says, while she has had to cut hours due to staffing issues.

“I have had the most excellent staff, but they just can’t afford to live here in Galway,” she says.

“My heart is broken as I wasn’t ready to retire. I have never skimped on so much as an egg, as I was always keen to ensure quality would not suffer.”

24/12/2024

15/12/2024

The Irishman James Joyce was one of the most celebrated writers of the 20th century. He left behind an impressive literary legacy, and two children whose stories are of sadness and unrealized potential.

When Joyce met Nora Barnacle, he was an impoverished struggling writer, and she was a Galway chambermaid. The couple had two children together, though they didn’t marry until the children were adults. By the time their son Giorgio reached his teens, Joyce was an international celebrity, thanks to his controversial novel Ulysses. Giorgio took up with a much older married American heiress, and they were eventually married. He had planned to become an opera singer, but his alcoholism ruined his chances.

The life of James Joyce’s daughter Lucia was especially tragic. She had shown promise as an avant garde dancer but was eventually overcome by mental illness. After multiple episodes of violent and dangerous behaviour, Lucia was institutionalized in 1932, at age 25. She would spend the remainder of her life in asylums.

Giorgio and his wife had one child, Stephen Joyce, who eventually inherited James Joyce’s estate and spent much of his life suing anyone who dared quote his grandfather’s work. Stephen died on January 20th, 2020, childless, at age 78. James Joyce now has no living descendants.

The photograph is of Lucia Joyce, who died in an English mental health hospital at age 75, on December 12th, 1982.

15/12/2024

Nora Barnacle was born in 1884 at Galway City workhouse, the second child of Thomas and Annie Barnacle.

At a young age, she was sent to stay with her grandmother, although later she returned to live at a house in Bowling Green in the city with her mother and six siblings.

Nora was known for being impulsive and carefree and enjoyed flouting convention.

She moved to Dublin in 1904 where she worked as a maid in Finn's Hotel on Nassau Street.

It was at this point that she caught the attention of an aspiring author named James Joyce.

Later that year, after a whirlwind romance, the pair eloped to Switzerland. They lived together thereafter and had two children, although they did not marry until 1931.

It appears that James Joyce visited his wife's home county of Galway just twice.

On the second occasion in 1912, he spent several weeks and attended the Galway Races, cycled to a graveyard in Oughterard, sailed to Inishmore and possibly went as far as the Marconi Station near Clifden.

Joyce was clearly inspired by his visit to the west.
His poem 'She weeps over Rahoon' is written about the cemetery in Galway while Joyce also wrote two essays on the county.
He also published an article on his namesake, Myles Joyce, hanged unjustly for a murder he did not commit at Maamtrasna in 1882.
Joyce and Barnacle moved around Europe regularly over the coming years and Nora became a multi-linguist.

She also worked various jobs, including as a laundress, to support her husband, whose career as a writer took some years to take off.
Nora was less than impressed with Joyce’s complicated writing style, and later said she had never read Ulysses, his most famous book.

Nevertheless, she was a superb muse and Joyce based many of his most famous characters, including Molly Bloom, on his wife.
Joyce eventually found literary success, giving Nora much of the credit for her support.

James Joyce died in 1941, having not returned to Ireland since his sojourn to Galway in 1912.

His relationship with his homeland was strained.
“Do you know what Ireland is? Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow,” Stephen Dedalus, a character in Joyce's 'A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man' says, perhaps mirroring Joyce's own view of the country.

Nora Barnacle outlived her husband by a decade, dying in Switzerland in 1951.

Today, there is a little museum in Galway City, Nora Barnacle House, dedicated to her life and that of her husband.

07/12/2024

Coat of paint for the coat of arms!

06/12/2024

Local political matters of the 16th century feature in the next lecture of the Society in the Harbour Hotel, on Mon., 9 Dec. at 8 pm. The topic is ‘ANGLICISING TUDOR CONNACHT: the expansion of English rule in the lordships of Clanrickard and Hy Many’, and the speaker is Dr Joe Mannion, the author of a recent book on Tudor Connacht.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the adjacent south Connacht lordships of Clanrickard and Hy Many lay beyond the effective control of the Tudor government. Both had cultural and socio-political structures in the Gaelic Irish tradition, but were overseen by rulers of different ethnic origins: Clanrickard was ruled by the Burke dynasty, descendants of the thirteenth-century Anglo-Norman conquerors and colonists of Connacht, while Hy Many was governed by the indigenous Gaelic Irish O’Kelly lords.
Dr Mannion will explore the difficulties experienced by the historically hostile political communities of Clanrickard and Hy Many, and the changes wrought in the Tudor period in the political, social and economic fabric of the province of Connacht.
Admission is free of charge and both members and non-members of the Society are welcome.

02/12/2024

Galway Cultural Controversies -
audio recordings now online

On Culture Night, in association with Galway City Museum, we visited a number of cultural controversies of the past century or so. Eight speakers took us around relevant sites from the Pálás Cinema, via An Taibhdhearc, to the former Cinema Theatre in William Street.

It was all recorded by Mary Cunningham and it's now available online here:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1819632/episodes/16155942

Feel free to share

The photo, courtesy of Aodh Ó Coileáin, shows the audience for Gary McMahon's talk.

Here's the running order:

Introduction: John Cunningham

Nudity in Leisureland: Gary McMahon

Murphy's Law - staging controversies: Jonathan Hannon

Walter Macken and the crawthumpers: Mary Cunningham

Representing ourselves, disgracing ourselves again: keeping Irish language theatre lit: Aodh Ó'Coileáin

Opposition by those in authority in the 1920s to the idea of a public library: Pat McMahon

The Galway Film Society, Hail Mary, The University, and the prayer groups: James C. Harold

George A Birmingham and his 'sheepish finger sucking maid': John Cunningham

Galway Cathedral: 'a ghastly monstrosity'?: Brendan O'Mahony

This is a recording of a walking tour through the streets of Galway where eight speakers give an account, at appropriate locations, of incidents or issues related to the arts which were the cause of some controversy in the past.  SELECT CHAPT...

28/11/2024

Happy Thanksgiving to all of our American friends out there.
We probably won't be dining on turkey and ham just yet, as we usually eat that at Christmas.
We might not be eating sweet potatoes either, as our preference is for floury Records, Maris Pipers and Golden Wonders.
We will however be toasting your health, around about 8 o'clock, our time, which will correspond to your 3pm, or 2pm or 1pm, depending on your time zone.
So, wherever you are, and however you celebrate, here's to you and yours, and to us and ours, and to a Happy Thanksgiving for all.
Brian Nolan Walking Tours of Galway
Photo; Buying the Christmas Turkey at the Galway Market c. 1965, courtesy of The Connacht Tribune.

28/11/2024

Lá an Altaithe sona duit! ☘️🦃☘️ Here is an article about the Irish connections to the first ever Thanksgiving in the year 1621! 👇🦃👇

"The First Thanksgiving 1621," by J.L.G. Ferris (c. 1932). A band of starving pilgrims at Plymouth Rock were saved at the last minute by the arrival of a ship from Dublin. Photo: Library of Congress
In 1621, the pilgrims, just arrived in the New World, had no idea how wild their new frontier could be. Winter arrived and with it came starvation, death, and the idea that maybe it was time to give up and go back to Europe where the strict confines of politics were easier to deal with than the utter randomness of Mother Nature.

The real story of what happened next is all but lost.

On February 20 of that same year, a ship called The Lyon arrived and delivered much needed provisions which helped sustain the humble colony. The ship was sent over by a Dublin merchant whose daughter was married to one of the pilgrims.

Grateful for their salvation, the pilgrims dubbed the following day, February 21, a Day of Thanksgiving.

Over 200 years later, President Lincoln decreed the day a national holiday and moved it to the fourth Thursday of November. The pilgrims’ amiable relationship with the Native Americans became the focus of the holiday, and the true origin of the first Thanksgiving remained misconstrued for the next 75 years.

In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving back a few weeks because of its proximity to Christmas. He thought that providing more time between holidays would help merchants.

The move proved very unpopular with the general public and one year later the date was again changed back to the fourth Thursday in November. Amidst the brief change, however, the origin of Thanksgiving was studied to validate the original date.

The Boston Post, the largest paper in New England at the time, took up the story in “The Observant Citizen,” a section of the paper which discussed a wide range of topics. An unsigned article appeared in this section which mentioned The Lyon as the ship responsible for the first Thanksgiving, but the writer claimed that the ship had come from England or Holland.

Irish organizations in Boston were outraged and cited anti-Irish bias as the reason for the paper’s failure to mention Dublin as the true port of origin.

The writer of the article later acknowledged that he had made a mistake and promised to make a correction in the paper the following Thanksgiving. The correction was never made. Time quelled the public outcry, and the true origin of the first Thanksgiving is all but forgotten."

This article, by John Cusack, originally appeared in the December / January 1997 issue of Irish America Magazine. 👍☘️🙏



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