Search Results for 'Hangar Ballroom'

Joseph Owens lived in Glenamaddy with his wife, who was born Annie M Tuohy. They had three children, Dick, Mary, and her twin Joseph (born February 4, 1912), who was known to one and all as Josie. The father died very young. Annie remarried, this time to a man named Doorly, and in 1922, the family bought a four-bay four-storey early 19th century house in Lower Dominick Street from Nora O’Donnell and moved to Galway. Annie was a busy woman, she opened a drapery shop where she designed clothes, made them and sold them in her shop, and she kept lodgers upstairs, all as she was rearing her children.

Around the year 1930, there were about 400 residents in Salthill and it was attracting large number of visitors and tourists who came in the summer. There was provision at the time for the building of some 100 homes. The population was growing but there was no church in the area. Any resident or tourist who wished to go to Mass had to travel into the Jesuit Church or St Joseph’s, or out west to the chapel in Barna.

On this day 70 years ago, June 1 1953, Scoil Íde opened for the first time. In 1952, the Sisters of Jesus and Mary purchased Allen’s Hotel on Dalysfort Road which had been run by John and Angela Allen. It had at one time been known as Daly’s Fort House, a high-class hotel run by a Mrs Galbraith. She sold it to a Mr Miller of Persse’s Distillers who used it as a private house and he sold it on to the Allens. Many will remember it as the place where Bruce Woodcock, the English Heavyweight champion, trained for his famous fight with Máirtín Thornton.

The first concerted move to improve Salthill (that I know of) was in 1882 when funds were collected locally and the Salthill Improvement Company was set up to improve the resort. The prevention of pollution was a priority. The company had its ups and downs and eventually died off. The first meeting of the Galway Urban District Council in 1925 had a deputation from Salthill who listed proposed improvements, In the 1930s a Salthill Development Committee was set up.

He founded The Capitol Showband that scored a number of firsts for Irish bands at home and abroad. He discovered songwriting legend Phil Coulter, he set visionary trad band Planxty on the road to success, he is Des Kelly.