Search Results for 'Renmore Barracks'

As the guerrilla war attacks by the Irish Volunteers on the RIC began to escalate in 1919, the British government recruited World War I veterans as a complementary force to the RIC. It advertised for men willing “to face a tough and dangerous task”. These were the Black and Tans. A further campaign was launched to recruit former army officers who were specifically formed into counter insurgency units known as the Auxiliaries or ‘The Auxies’. They wore distinctive ‘Tam O’Shanter’ caps. One of these units, D Company, was stationed in Lenaboy Castle and in ‘The Retreat’ in Salthill.

On the 1820 map of Galway, the site of the Taibhdhearc was part of the then Augustinian Church. When the present church was built in the 1850s the site became derelict. The late Ned Joyce remembered a large tree growing on the site, a tree which stretched across the street to a tenement known as ‘The Windings’. The occupants used to hang their washing on the tree on fine days.

Bernard Phillips, who was born c1835, was a widower who worked with Thomas McDonogh and Co in Merchants Road. He had been married to Mary Bowen from Galway, and they had five children. She unfortunately died, and some time afterwards Bernard was loaned by McDonogh’s to Craig and Gardiner, 41 Dame Street, Dublin, where he worked as a mercantile clerk. While he was there he met and married Teresa Hayes from Dublin. They came back to Galway and Bernard continued working for McDonogh’s.