Portumna

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<p>Historian and raconteur Brian Nolan of <a href="https://www.galwaywalks.com/?fbclid=IwY2xjawGRvMpleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHeR0Hy444CRtd2Bpo-0X-XYJEgfEuQIuIEN1MvXnTzNKYjI1GPLHPhUaUw_aem_EAdOcLJqQBl61qjo9pgoag" target="_blank">Galway Walks</a> is renowned for his knowledge of all things <a href="https://xploreapp.io/galway" target="_blank">Galway. </a>  When we asked him for his spookiest ghost story for the season that's in it, he penned this tale about one of the least known, but easily the most haunted place in Galway, the Cholera Gate.  Sit back, grab a cuppa and enjoy this walk on the dark side of the city on All Hallow's Day.  And find out where Galway's most active poltergeist resides!</p>
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<h5>The Cholera Gate</h5>
<h4>By Brian Nolan</h4>
<h4>A Golden Age of Construction</h4>
<p>For fifty years, between 1809 and 1859, the entire western approaches to Galway city were one huge building site, with workmen swarming over scaffolding, hauling timbers and stones on block and tackles, mixing mortar and digging, digging everywhere.&nbsp;</p>
<p>During that period, the city fathers, the merchants, burghers and officials, engaged themselves in rebuilding the area between Woodquay and Newcastle, in the process taming the 'Corrib' or the 'Galway' River, draining the swamps at Woodquay and Fisheries Field, building the Gaol (or prison), the Salmon Weir bridge, the Town Hall, the Courthouse, the Fever Hospital, the Work House (now the University Hospital), several Distilleries, Mills of every description, new roads, the stone quays at Woodquay, the University Quadrangle building and the Eglinton Canal.&nbsp;</p>
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<h5>The University of Galway Quadrangle Building</h5>
<p>It can be argued that this was Galway's golden age of construction, dragging the near desolate city that had been destroyed in the 17th century, kicking and screaming into the heady industrial mania of the early 19th century. Two huge quarries fed this industrial scale of construction, the rich limestone quarries of Menlo (Menlough) and Anglingham, both just three miles up the Corrib from the city.</p>
<p>Some 400 men were engaged for fifty years in cutting and carving out the beautiful black and grey limestone from these local quarries, a geological gold-mine, providing the city with both ready building material and with two valuable cash earners, jet black marble, and dark, flawless, easy to cut limestone.</p>
<h4>West of Ireland 'Klondike'</h4>
<p>Many men made vast and fast fortunes in this west of Ireland 'Klondike', and yes, in their haste to quarry and mine and build, many more men lost their lives, their limbs, or both! Workplace safety was not on anyone's lips back then!</p>
<p>The fresh-cut stone, in 8 foot long slabs, was floated down the Corrib from Menlo on flat-bottom barges, all the way to Woodquay to be chiselled or chased for immediate use on a local building project, or the better stone was loaded onto huge carts, to be hauled across the city to the port, for onward transfer by sailing ship to London, where many of the finest architectural projects in that great city were constructed from Galway Limestone, the very best quality 'finishing' stone to be had in the British Isles.</p>
<h4>The Spectre of Death</h4>
<p>However, along with this boom breathing life into Galway's economy, their also loomed a spectre of death, and terrible death at that. Cholera was about to enter the stage, and Cholera was not about to sit on the wings, no Cholera took centre stage and it took lives, hundreds and hundreds of lives. By June 1820, Galway was in trouble.</p>
<p>Some say the deadly disease came here on the ships that plied the coastal waters from London, the sailors mixing freely with other salts who had just returned from India and China. Others said it came here on the uniforms of the locally raised regiment in the British Army, the Connacht Rangers, whose regiment was divided between Jamaica in the Caribbean, and Benghal in India, where the world's first Cholera outbreak started.&nbsp;</p>
<h4>A Fast Felling Fever</h4>
<p>More said it was the wrath of God, punishing the people on this island for having lost their faith during the long, dark, godless period of the Penal Laws.&nbsp;</p>
<p>What ever way it arrived here, it very quickly devastated the city, killing rich and poor alike. But like all these diseases, it effected the poor, the very young and the very old most severely, carrying them away in less than 48 hours! One minute they were singing a lullaby to their baby, the next moment, they were keening a dirge for their child or their parent. Three doctors and several clergy, catholic and protestant were winnowed by the fast felling fever.&nbsp;</p>
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<h5>Lime Kiln at Fisheries Field</h5>
<h4>The Stench of Death and Decay</h4>
<p>Anyone who could, fled the city, and in the process brought death to Tuam, Oughterard, Loughrea, Athenry, Ballinasloe and all across the county. Nobody was spared.  And worse was to come. The crops failed. The potatoes rotted in the lazy beds. A stench of death and decay hung over the city and the county.</p>
<p>Back in the city, bodies were piling up and that only worsened the situation. Three huge lime kilns were built on Fisheries field, and soon huge pyres of smoke rose from the turf and timber fires within the kilns, where limestone rocks were converted in the tremendous kiln heat into lime, a natural disinfectant, that was used to decontaminate houses and hospitals and more so, bodies.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Rotting bodies, unburied corpses, and the rats the unburied flesh attracted were the biggest threat to the population. Proper burial was often impossible, people were terrified of catching the deadly disease, and so, pretty quickly, it wasn't just limestone rocks that were burned in the limekilns on Fisheries Field.</p>
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<h5>Cholera Epidemic Plaque at the Lime Kiln</h5>
<p>Turns out, when they were digging the foundations for the Town Hall and for the Courthouse. Between 1809 and 1820, they unearthed hundreds and hundreds of skeletons, mostly just the big bones, the femurs and the skulls, of the people that had been buried here for centuries. This was the old Franciscan Abbey, and since the 15th century, the land immediately around the Abbey buildings was the largest and most popular burying ground in the city.&nbsp;</p>
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<h5>The Franciscan Abbey Facade</h5>
<p>The Lynches and the Brownes were buried around St. Nicholas church, the Blakes at St. Mary's on the hill, the Dominican abbey at the Claddagh, The Skerretts and the Joyces were buried with the Augustinians on Forthill, but everyone else was buried at the Franciscan Abbey, and now, that land was being redeveloped for the Courthouse and the Town Hall.&nbsp;</p>
<p>So what to do with the bones they unearthed. Well there was plenty of precedence and no one batted an eyelid when someone suggested the bones be burned and ground up as fertiliser, just as had been done a hundred years earlier with the bones of the thousands of men killed at the Battle of Aughrim. By 1720 those mounds of dead soldiers bones were being 'recycled', and so it was with the bones of the old Irish and Normans that had been buried at the old Franciscan abbey outside the medieval walls of Galway city.</p>
<h4>A Secret Well Kept</h4>
<p>No one spoke of this, no one wrote about this, no one admitted to this. But people I know, have kept this secret, taking it with them to the grave, or rather they kept it with them, until it got out.&nbsp;</p>
<p>I have no proof, but it's likely that the prisoners in the Galway gaol were used as pall bearers, and they, eager to get early release or perhaps get an opportunity to escape, who knows, but they were willing conspirators in the clean-up of the city.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Day after day, night after night, the kilns were fed, turf and stones, turf and bones, turf and stones, turf and bones, layer after layer, and yes, sometimes the bodies of the Cholera victims were chucked in too, carted over from the Fever Hospital at the other side of Fisheries Field where the Centre for International Studies building now stands.&nbsp;</p>
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<h5>The Old Fever Hospital</h5>
<h4>Back on the Gravy Train</h4>
<p>Every week a kiln was allowed to cool, and the ash was put through a griddle, a sieve, to take the large stones and charcoal, and bones out, and the fine lime was shovelled into carts to be used around the city as quick-lime, lime-wash, or white-wash.  As a disinfectant it proved very effective, but better still, as a fertiliser, it was a miracle cure for poor soil. By 1823, the epidemic was over, and the potato harvest was better than ever.&nbsp;</p>
<p>The time for fear was over! It was time to get back on the gravy train, quarrying and building, brewing and distilling, draining and dredging, the city quickly came alive again, like a dried-out bog blooms again after a shower of rain, the city, shook off its mourning reeds and donned the mason's apron and the painter's smock, there was work to be done, and money to be made.&nbsp;</p>
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<h5>The Emerging Woman</h5>
<h4>Fisheries Gate - Geata An Galair</h4>
<p>The gate is rarely locked, except at Halloween. Two hundred years ago this gate was called 'geata an galair' by the prisoners in the gaol, but today, its just called the Fisheries gate. Any time I cross that field, or stand at the one remaining limekiln, I say a prayer for the people who died of Cholera and other fevers 200 years ago, and I also say a prayer for the other men, who had to deal with the reality of the epidemic, and clean up the mess.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Would I go across that field after dark? No way!&nbsp;</p>
<p>Would I walk through that little gate down by the banks of the Corrib into Fisheries Field at midnight? Nope, not a chance!&nbsp;</p>
<p>Oh, and would I spend the midnight hour sitting in the little garden behind the black railings to the left of the Franciscan bell tower, opposite the Court House? You have got to be kidding!&nbsp;</p>
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<h5>The Galway Court House</h5>
<h4>Galway's Most Active Poltergeist</h4>
<p>That little spot, between the tower and the railing, is the home of the city's most active poltergeist. I believe it is one of our ancestors who made a stand back in 1820, and said, "No, you won't use my bones to filter whiskey for a bunch of hot air merchants in Westminister! Over my dead body!"...and he meant it!</p>
<p>Story, and it is just a story; by Brian Nolan&nbsp;</p>
<p>Photos; Brian Nolan.&nbsp;</p>
<p>For more stories like this, follow him on Twitter X, Facebook and Instagram on @Galwaywalks.</p>
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A Galway Ghost Story on All Hallow's Day

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