Moving Pádraic Ó Conaire to Eyre Square, Galway City, Ireland 1967
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 ต.ค. 2024
- Statue of Pádraic Ó Conaire returns to a centre spot in Eyre Square Galway.
Eyre Square underwent redevelopment in recent years at a cost of £50,000 to Bord Fáilte. While it is a lot different to the old square, the park in the centre has been retained. It has Brown’s Gate and it has a statue Pádraic Ó Conaire the Irish language writer and journalist.
In his lifetime, this little gnome-like man, civil servant, sailor, Gaelic Leaguer, storyteller, writer, poet, was much loved. He was a familiar and welcome wanderer around the stoney countryside of Connemara.
Pádraic Ó Conaire died in 1928 and was greatly mourned. The Gaelic League opened a fund to honour him in his native city. Sculptor Albert Power was commissioned to make a statue. Liam O’Brian, one of the organisers of the fund said the money rolled in. He describes the sculpture as,
A charming conception. Pádraic taking a rest on a Connemara stone wall.
Upon completion, the monument was presented to the city of Galway and placed in Eyre Square.
The only artistic, outdoor, non-religious monument in the whole of Connacht.
The statue was unveiled by Éamon de Valera in 1934. It stood almost dead centre in the square on a heaped up wall of stones on green grass and shaded by trees and bushes.
Galway grew to love this statue.
When the Eyre Square got a face lift the statue was moved from its original site to make way for a plaque to President John F Kennedy, marking the spot where he received the freedom of the city of Galway on his Irish visit in 1963.
The people of Galway were angered when the Pádraic Ó Conaire statue was banished to a corner up against an ESB transformer station. Letters of outrage were sent to the Connacht Tribune and the Connacht Sentinel. Galway Corporation requested that Bord Fáilte return the statue to its original location. A compromise was made when Pádraic Ó Conaire was moved to a more central position.
A ‘Newsbeat’ report broadcast on 21 March 1967. The reporter is Cathal O’Shannon.
I preferred that design of Eyre square in the video rather the one now. It was both a mix of modern and classic at the time!
OMG 3.41 Christies i used to get my hair cut in there. And Gilmores beside it was a betting office..sundays it was the local Credit union
My dear departed father told us about Pádraic Ó Conaire, If you visited Galway City as a young child, as a student, a shopper in town for the day, as a farmer, as a visitor from Connemara, as a tourist, as a working person, as a well educated person, as a folklorist, as a poet,, as storyteller, as singer, a dancer, as a local person or as a very important person of very high stand, yes you all have had your photo taken sitting or standing alongside dear Padraic O' Conaire . It is very good to see my near relative is still thought of and spoken about in local and high places, Good for you cousin Padraic
the story does not end their... padraic was beheaded in the early ninties ... by two students from the north of ireland .they were captured on a bus going north with padraic head in a bag . padraic head was detained in mill street garda station for several weeks , until the city concil decided what to do . many people protested at mill street , with free padraic now placards . padraic was reunited with his head eventually .... in the late ninties padraic was moved to the city concil offices on foster street . he sits their now forlorned and forgotten barley visable in the shrubs and trees .... slan leis an sarmaigh ......
He’s in the Museum and a replica now sits in Eyre Square. The museum is free to the public and he is constantly on display.
I seen old Woolworths behind them, that was my escape from the boredom and parochialism of Galway...I used to spend hours looking at the war models, planes, ships, tanks, soldiers...Letting my imagination fly...then the 50 different jars of sweets, and I used to steal the odd Dinky too...LOL"
A young Cathal O'Shannon.
The 1960's ideas of how the world should look were mostly completely shite IMHO. They swept anything decorative or with the patina of age upon it away and replaced it with bland, squared off, characterless, soulless concrete constructions which have aged ignobly.
Absolutely. And it was often done under exceptionally corrupt circumstances, with town planners taking bribes from construction companies and architects. In London, the major criminal was John Poulson- one of the most appalling men imaginable. He utterly destroyed dozens of Victorian masterpieces such as the old Cannon Street Station. Bribed the Railway management and several MPs. He was eventually imprisoned but his sentence was nothing compared to the disgusting vandalism he inflicted on cities across the UK. An absolute bastard. Go look up the old Cannon Street Station on Google and you’ll see exactly what I mean.
@@TodayFreedom And his crony T Dan Smith took great chunks out of Newcastle. I can just about remember the corruption trial although I was a small boy. Like you say they, and all the others like them, should have been tried for vandalism. Another example, amongst very many, was William Blake's house in Soho which was demolished in 1964. Now William Blake House stands there; a building so dreary and ugly that it's difficult to look at. How did it happen? Corruption mixed with madness.
@@biffin62 Yep- and once they’re gone, they’re gone forever. Birmingham Central Library- a masterpiece of Victorian ironwork and engineering...replaced by a hideous monstrosity. One of the worst examples I know of is the annihilation of Plymouth. Literally the entire Georgian and Victorian city centre was demolished. A friend lives there and, as she says, “You can see on people’s faces that they realise they live in a depressing dump”. What the Luftwaffe did pales into insignificance compared to our wonderful 1960s councils.
@@TodayFreedom Destroyed for ever in a moment, a beautiful cityscape that took hundreds of years to evolve. The same thing happened in Bath to the Southgate area. What collective madness entered peoples' minds in the sixties and seventies? The rape of Britain. "Goodbye to old Bath/ We who loved you are sorry/ They've carted you off by developer's lorry"