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Wednesday, September 11, 2002
Sligo should learn from its history
By Declan Foley
In recent months the news in Sligo has been about the Corporation of Sligo leasing a car park to a property developer.
The reasoning of the officials of this august body is that it will all be good for the future of Sligo. Joyce and Yeats teach us that history is circular, and the lesson of MacArthur’s Bakery converted to a supermarket in the centre of Sligo still has not been learned.
When the supermarket concept first came to Sligo in the early 1960s the stores were small by today’s standards of large commercial warehouse buildings and the concentration was on packaged food, unlike modern supermarkets where you have one-stop shopping.
The senior Mr Crawford, then Managing Director of Blackwood’s in Grattan Street was asked at the time why he would not consider turning his premises into a supermarket.
He replied: “I would only contribute to closing every small shop in the county. As these are my wholesale customers I would be putting them out of business.” Great sentiments, alas King Canute failed with the tide as history tells us.
On a recent visit to Sligo it was nice to see Jimmy Higgin’s dream of forty-years realised with the development of Rockwood Parade, but to see the planning permission allowed for apartments in shopping areas such as High Street and Old Market Street with the destruction of 18th and 19th century buildings shows the mentality that destroyed the architecture of Dublin in the 1960s is now blooming in Sligo.
If the officials of Sligo Corporation spent a few weeks in the bowels of the Town Hall examining the history of Sligo they would discover that in 1960 the traders of Connolly or Pound Street, High Street and Market Street purchased two disused properties on the corner of West Gardens and Market Street and gave the title to Sligo Corporation on condition that the area be turned into a car park.
Which it was within a few weeks of the transaction taking place. The same traders also ensured that Christmas was a time to be enjoyed by all in Sligo with the lovely display of lighting stretching from the junction of Mail Coach road to Lady Erin and the arrival on the December 8 of Santa Claus in a pony and trap, lack of snow prevented the use of reindeer and sleigh - well that’s what we were told!
Dolly Wallace of course always wore a good Santa Claus suit. Those were the days when the Connolly, High and Market Street traders ran annual competitions, such as find the wrong item in a shop window. You might find a bottle of Eugene McCaffrey’s cough mixture in P Foley’s, The Phoenix Bar, or a tin of peas in Miss Keaney’s newsagency.
These streets in the early 1960s were full of shoppers from town and county alike.
Going down Pound Street to use the name we did then, on the left was Miss Gorevan’s ‘specialising in black pudding’; Ma Fallon’s vegetables; Sherrins Paper Shop (newsagents); Kearns butchers; The Cruiskeen Lawn, Bar and Grocery and vegetables; Rennick’s Tailors. Therewas also The Bar 20, which had a glass sign over one door of two and on the other side Keaveney’s Pub; ‘The Cobweb’, Christy McLynn’s pub; Mary Cawley’s grocery, sweets and milk; Tommy Reagan’s, Davey’s and next door Hamilton’s and on the corner The Forge owned by the Hamilton’s of High Street
ABOUT THE WRITER
Declan Foley was born in Sligo in 1950 where he lived until 1987, when with his wife Helen and their children he emigrated to Australia.
In 1970 Declan became a member of the Marist PPU and president of that organisation in 1976. He also served on the Sligo Chamber of Commerce Council, and was a member of the Sligo Tourist Association.
Since 1990 he has been secretary/ editor of Beyond Benbulben - an Australian Yeats Society. In September 2001 he organised the very successful first international seminar on John Butler Yeats in Chestertown, New York.
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