Paul’s passion for postcards results in a fascinating insight into Galway’s history

For 35 years, Paul Duffy travelled every highway and byway in Galway as an engineer with the County Council and it was a job he loved.

Now that he’s retired, he is enjoying his other passions of old postcards and history – and has combined those with his engineering knowledge to create a virtual tour of County Galway from times past in a new book entitled Galway: History on a Postcard.

It is a fascinating collection, covering all areas of the county, presented area by area in a highly accessible fashion. Postcards, dating from the late 19th century up to the middle of the 20th century illustrate every page.

Alongside them is a brief, but comprehensive description offering a brilliant insight into life during that time. It was often a dirty, smelly life, but it was one where people used their resources to survive on very little, as Paul points out in his text.

The cards capture towns all over the county – Gort, Loughrea, Ballinasloe, Clifden, Tuam, Athenry and Oughterard, for instance – as well as rural scenes and images from the Aran Islands. It’s no surprise, given his engineering background, that there’s a strong focus on architecture.

 “You can’t take the engineer out of me,” he says with a laugh.

Roscommon-born Paul first developed his passion for postcard collecting while he was a youngster at secondary school in Athlone.

A school friend brought in an old postcard of the midlands town and Paul was intrigued. The friend, whose family had a shop, had about 100 more at home, depicting scenes from all over the West of Ireland and gave them to Paul. His love affair with cards was well on its way.

After graduating in engineering from the then UCG, he worked in Clare and Kerry before eventually moving to Galway where and his Clare-born wife, Mary settled.

As an engineer with Galway County Council he was involved with the rural water supply for years, and later worked in water quality management for the entire Corrib Navigation System, finally moving to roads, so his knowledge of the county is second to none.

Paul has long had a keen interest in architectural history and regularly gave talks to the Old Galway Society on buildings in the city and county. When people attending his talks realised he collected postcards, they gifted him their old images until he eventually had 3,5000 photos of Galway County. He has a separate collection relating to the City, which will be the subject of a second book, he explains.

Postcards were first produced in the late 19th century and quickly became collectors’ items, so Paul is following in a well-established tradition. Collecting and analysing these old cards can yield a great deal of information about a town, he says, especially if have some that are taken several years apart, and put them down side by side.

“Sometimes you suddenly see a real change, and where you really see it is in the streetscape of Clifden between postcards from the 1890s and ones taken just after the railways arrived in 1910.”

As Paul points out in the book’s introduction, several local companies produced postcards of Galway, but many were also produced abroad. He points to two photos of Gort from the early 1900s – in one card, printed in Germany the street is pristine, while the other, produced in Galway, shows a more realistic depiction of life, with cow dung visible on the street.

When you examine the pictures closely, there is plenty of evidence to show some were doctored, he says. One of the hotel in Leenane, dating from the turn of the 20th century depicts the sea and mountains as they really were. The same photo has been enhanced for another card, with extra mountain peaks being added, while the tide is in and there are boats on the water that were not in the original.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune....