Search Results for 'Railway Hotel'

Our photograph was taken on June 5, 1927 from the platform of a Cumann na nGaedheal election rally in Eyre Square. The crowd (almost entirely male), “looked voters every one”. In the background you can see the Browne Doorway and the Railway Hotel.

You might think that those at the core of the Irish literary renaissance at the beginning of the 20th century, were one big happy family beavering away in their rooms at Lady Gregory's home at Coole, Co Galway. In those early days it was a house full of voices and sounds. Sometimes you heard WB Yeats humming the rhythm of a poem he was cobbling together; or the click-clacking of Lady Gregory's typewriter as she worked on another play for the Abbey. There was the sound of the Gregory grandchildren playing in the garden; the booming voice of George Bernard Shaw, as he complains that he is only allowed to have either butter or jam on his bread, but not both to comply with war rations (He cheated by the way. He put butter on one side of his bread, and when he thought no one was looking, piled jam on the other!); or the voices of the artist Jack Yeats and JM Synge returning from a day messing about on a boat calling out to a shy Sean O'Casey to come out of the library for God's sake and enjoy the summer afternoon.

ONE OF the great pleasures of the early morning walk, jog, or run through the streets of Galway is that you can experience our urban landscape unencumbered with either human or motorised traffic.

Towards the end of last year, we featured a series of articles on the building that is now occupied by the students’ bar in NUIG. The building started as a jute bag factory, then was converted to a bonded warehouse for Persse’s Distillery, later became the National Shell factory during World War I, was occupied by the 17th Lancers and the 6th Dragoon Guards, before being converted into the ammunitions factory known as IMI.

Week III

Week III

Since opening its doors in 1852, the luxury four star Hotel Meyrick which overlooks the historic Eyre Square at the heart of Galway City has welcomed more than six million visitors.

August 3 1857 was a day of celebration in Galway as the British War Department handed over two Russian cannons to the town commissioners. These cannon were described as “64 pounders of a heavy and clumsy description, each weighing two tons”, and were part of a large amount of Russian ordnance which fell into the hands of the 88th regiment during the Crimean War. Many of these artillery pieces were presented by the War Department as trophies to cities and town across the British Isles.

Nora Barnacle left Galway early in 1904. She was 20 years old, a strong-willed girl running from a tyrannical uncle who disapproved of her latest boy friend. Within weeks of her arrival in Dublin she would become the muse and lover of James Joyce and the inspiration of some and his greatest works — Greta Conroy in The Dead, Bertha the common law wife in Exiles and Molly Bloom in Ulysses — all share some of Nora’s character and experiences. In October of that same year Nora and Jim would elope to Europe and in due course step on to the pages of literary history. She would return to her native city only twice during her 47 years of exile before dying in Zurich in 1951, having lived 67 tumultuous years.

King Edward VII was known as ‘Peacemaker’ for his role in fostering good relations between Britain and France, he was renowned for his politeness and good manners, and throughout the continent he was affectionately called the ‘Uncle of Europe’.