We know there was a hospital in High Middle Street in 1509, though it was probably a poorhouse in reality. In 1542, the Corporation built St Bridget’s Hospital on Bohermore. It subsequently served as a Leper Hospital. The 1651 map of Galway shows four hospitals. In 1820, a fever hospital opened on Earl’s Island, and in 1824, a small lying-in hospital was established on Mill Street at Madeira Island. The County Infirmary opened on Prospect Hill in June 1802.
The first formal meeting of the Board of Guardians of the Galway Workhouse took place in 1839 and the building opened on July 2 1842. At the roadside was a large cut-stone entrance lodge which can be seen in our aerial photograph which was taken in 1953. The trees you see in the foreground of our image shield the Newcastle Road from view and the gate lodge is just across the road.
The long white building we see behind the gate lodge was the original workhouse. The newly constituted County Galway Hospitals and Dispensaries Committee met in 1922 to organise the transfer of the Prospect Hill building to the workhouse site. They had to refurbish the pauper section of the workhouse and repair damage done by the previous military occupation. It was virtually reconstructed with a new roof and floors. The large dormitory on each side of the three floors was divided into a long ward and two side wards with kitchen, bathroom and lavatories. The division into male and female sides were continued. Surgical cases were nursed on the top floor with the operating suite in the middle, consisting of two theatres with a complete glass roof, anaesthetic and sterilizing rooms. The building was now known as the Central Hospital.
The Fever Hospital, which had been purpose built in 1909/11 required no alterations; it had suitable accommodation for 72 persons with acute infectious diseases and was divided into six male and six female wards. By 1931, the capacity of the Central Hospital was 221 acute beds in the main block, 38 long stay beds in the rear extension, 18 in the maternity and 72 in the Fever Hospital. Overcrowding soon became a feature of the general medical and surgical wards and in the 1930s and 1940s, extra beds and even patients on mattresses on the floor between beds, were a common feature in surgical wards.
Woodlands, a large house in Renmore, opened as a sanatorium in 1924 and soon had accommodation for 49 patients.
There were two private hospitals in Galway at the time which functioned mainly as maternity hospitals, St Bride’s on Sea Road and Seamount in Salthill. St Theresa’s Nursing Home on Kingshill also functioned as a maternity unit.
Pressure was being put on the County Board of Health and the Department of Local Government to build a new hospital. The architect had to draw up nine sets of plans before one was accepted in 1941. It was now becoming obvious that the war was going to last a long time and building materials were in short supply so only the most urgent construction work could be contemplated. The construction of the new Regional Hospital started with the laying of the foundation stone in 1949 by the Minister for Health, Dr Noel Browne. It was situated behind the main block of the Central Hospital. Our photograph of 1953 shows part of the new construction in the background.
In 1957, the workhouse buildings were demolished and the gate lodge met a similar fate some time later.
The foundation stone for the Western Regional Sanatorium, now known as Merlin Park, was laid by Noel Browne in 1948, and in view of the urgency of the tuberculosis problem, four units were quickly built and 160 patients were transferred from Woodlands. By March 1953, six ward blocks were occupied by TB cases and Woodlands was converted for the treatment of tubercular orthopaedic cases from the western region.
In 1953, the ‘Blue Nuns’ opened Calvary Hospital in Renmore, a modern, well equipped hospital providing a maternity service and in-patient care. For a number of reasons, it closed in 1985 and it was purchased by a private company comprising a number of the medical profession. It reopened in 1986 as Galvia Hospital under lay management.
Our second photograph shows construction work on the nurse’s home beside the Regional Hospital nearing completion in 1938.
