Search Results for 'Paul McGinley'

At the beginning of the 19th century, Salthill began to develop as a tourist destination. People found the salt air invigorating and the sea was a huge attraction, not just for swimming or paddling, but also for its curative powers. It was thought to have medicinal powers, and so local people began to take advantage of this wonderful asset beside them to possibly make some money.

A unique event was held recently in Arus Bothar na Trá, to celebrate the 60th anniversary of a Salthill- based team winning the Galway County minor football championship. Never before had the group got together in the last 60 years.

Whether named after the French city or another location, the terrace of spectacular period homes that is Montpellier Terrace is an iconic location steeped in Galway history.

•Golf: Galway's Ronan Mallarney continues to lead the field at the AIG Irish Amateur Close Championship at Ballybunnion. The 23-years-old will be hoping to follow in the footsteps of Irish professionals Shane Lowry, Rory McIllroy, Graeme McDowell, Peter Lawrie, Padraig Harrington, Darren Clarke and Paul McGinley. Another Galway youngster, Devin Morley from Oughterard is currently lying in seventh place after the two rounds on 142.

Paul McGinley’s new book, Salthill - A History, Part 1, begins with a most informative historic timeline, taking the reader from 1557 to 1901. Early documents were sparse but in 1797, a French traveller “wrote of young damsels going to refresh their charms in the sea about two miles from the city”.

Salthill began to really liven up with the arrival of the Dublin to Galway train in 1851. Holidaymakers arrived at the resort in some style. Trains were met at the station by horse-drawn ‘cars’ or ‘buses’ which went out directly to the seaside.

On Sunday evening March 25 1866, the two children of the schoolmaster Mr St George, were playing near the fire together in the Mission School (now Scoil Fhursa), when suddenly there was an explosion. The elder child burnt his hand. His injuries put him into a ‘very precarious position’. I am not sure how serious that was, but the story took an insidious turn when it was given out that ‘some malicious person climbed on the roof, and threw a packet of gunpowder down the chimney.’

Salthill was a quiet fishing village, existing independently from Galway town, until the Victorian obsession for health and fresh air eventually came to the west of Ireland. Invigorating salt-sea baths, salt-water showers, and, as I mentioned in former weeks, confined bathing opportunities for women; but where men could hire togs for some manly swimming and diving. By 1828 it was noted that there were 40 to 50 neat lodges along its sea shore, where there were only two or three a few years before.

Physically, of course, Salthill has changed dramatically since the early years of the last century when the beaches were rocky, and the scattered houses and lodges offered sea baths and confined bathing geared for the protection of women’s modesty. Men, no doubt, could show off their swimming and diving skills with abandonment, but could risk becoming the subject of comment (adverse or otherwise) of a unique Salthill ‘People’s Parliament’ known to all as the Lazy Wall.

I n the late 19th century women and girls rarely swam in the sea. It was considered unseemly. Yet in the belief that sea water was good for the skin, hotels and guest houses along the seafront at Salthill proudly offered sea baths, and 'showers' which could be enjoyed in any weather.