Search Results for 'Dick Byrne'

The workshops were launched as part of World Heart Day on Sunday 29 September. The aim of the project is to encourage the arts to patients suffering from heart conditions.

Ronnie O’Gorman was the most influential Galwegian of the past fifty years. In The Galway Advertiser he created and nurtured a unique forum for Galway creativity, enterprise and community. Under Ronnie’s benign yet focused stewardship an entirely new version of Galway developed as the universal image of the city – an innovative, cultured, tolerant and sparkling city, successful, slightly raffish, and fun.

Peadar O’Dowd’s credentials for writing about Galway were impeccable. One of four children, Nono, Willie, Martin and Peadar, born to their parents John and Bridget, he grew up in Bohermore and was always grateful for the fact. He lived his life there and throughout that life would celebrate the area and its people in hundreds of articles and interviews he published in various newspapers and journals.

On November 26, 1905, the new organ in the Augustinian Church was launched at a High Mass. The organ was placed ‘in the western gallery of the church in a handsome varnished case of specially selected woods, stands 26 feet high and 25 feet wide. The front pipes, some of which are over 18 feet long, are gilt and present a superb effect. The sides of the organ are recessed to leave room for an augmented choir and for the present, the organ is blown by hand at one end of case; at a future time it is hoped to apply a hydraulic motor to do this work. There is great variety in the tones of the various stops and the general effect of all combined is truly magnificent. The entire work reflects great credit on the builders who built it at their factory in Dublin. The number of speaking pipes in the organ is close to 2,000.'

What memories do you have of your schooldays? Here are some reminiscences of a few old ‘Jes-mugs’.

Prior to 1961, public performance of Irish traditional music in Galway took place primarily in the form of céilís in large dancehalls — namely in the Hangar, the Commercial and the Astaire. These were enormously popular — remember the hundreds of bicycles parked outside the Hangar on a Sunday night — but they began to go out of fashion in the sixties and were regarded as old fashioned and backward.

This building was designed by a Mr Farquarson around the year 1812. It has a three storey façade. The bays on the ground floor are articulated by paired fluted ionic pilasters while on the first floor, there are round-headed windows with moulded architraves which are flush with the wall surface and on the second floor segmented–headed windows similarly treated. The exterior has been preserved unchanged since it was built and is one of the most attractive corners in Galway, complemented by the rounded corner of what used to be McNamara’s and the elegant corner of what used to be Dillon’s.

The founder of the Galway Advertiser; the first female conductor at the Academy Awards; and the west of Ireland man who spearheaded the global Covid-19 response are all among 14 individuals who will be conferred with Honorary Degrees by NUI Galway in 2021.

The area we know as Devon Park in Salthill was originally part of the Lenaboy estate which belonged to the O’Hara family, who were based in Lenaboy Castle. The entire left hand side of our aerial photograph (c1940) was part of the estate, originally a green field site, the outer wall of which ran along the main Salthill Road. Bertie Simmons knocked part of that wall in the early 1930s and built two houses, one at the corner (where the fish shop is today) and one behind it where Hartigans lived.

AN TAIBHDHEARC, the city’s oldest theatre and the national Irish language theatre of Ireland, is about to celebrate its 90th birthday with Taibhdhearc@90, a star-studded show, to be directed by Maolíosa Stafford.