Search Results for 'William Dargan'

By 1848, construction of the railway line west from Dublin had reached Mullingar and the following year, the Chancellor of the Exchequer agreed to advance a loan of £500,000 towards extending the line to Galway. The board of the Midland and Great Western Railway entered into a contract with William Dargan to construct the entire length of line from Mullingar to Galway. Dargan’s success in building the Howth to Dublin railway had earned him a bonus of £300 and this he used to set himself up a a railway contractor.

This ancient site on the southern end of what we now know as Eyre Square was occupied by a Knights Templars convent in the 13th century. By the 17th century Robert Martin had a large house on the site, but this was taken from him by the Cromwellians and given to Edward Eyre. The Eyre family held on to the property and on May 12, 1712, Edward Eyre, son of the above, presented the land in front of his house to the corporation as a place of recreation for the people of Galway. In 1827, a man named Atkinson built houses at this end of the Square and by 1845, the site was occupied by a block of tenements owned by Fr Peter Daly.