Galway City Museum - Permenant Collection

Permenant Collection

• DJ Murphy Collection:

Consists of over three hundred mainly farm and industrial implements, mainly from Galway County. The collection also includes some rare straw items objects relating to traditional Irish rural life

• Medieval Stone Collection:

Various carvings and architectural fragments which date mainly to the sixteenth and seventeenth century Galway City. It includes chimney pieces, corbels, armorial plaques and heraldic panels. The collection also includes two complete fireplaces and the Atty Doorway dating to 1577.

One of the fireplaces dates to 1615 and is from the Slate House Nunery, Kirwins Lane. The second, also from the seventeenth century, bears the arms from the Lynch and Henry families and originates from a house in High Street.

Many pieces in this collection pertain to buildings which are no longer in existence and are associated with families of the ‘Tribes of Galway’

• Galway Militia Artefacts:

Objects relating to the Connaught Rangers, which belinged to people from Galway who were invilved in the various wars, from the Crimea War to World War I and II

• Claddagh Collection:

A collection relating to the history of the Claddagh, in particular the Claddagh apron and shawl. It also includes a model of the layout of the Claddagh village in the early twentieth century

• Maritime Collection:

A selection of fishing boats, navagation books, an Aldis lamp and the boat building tools of John Reney. Reney is regarded as the last of the Claddagh’s boat builders and his building yard was formerly adjacent to the site of the new museum

• Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Galway:

A collection of objects relating to nineteenth and twentieth century shops, public houses and business in Galway, including Persse’s Whiskey Distillery (Lady Gregory was a member of this family), Young’s Hibernian Mineral Water Works, clay pipe factories and a receipt book from one of the Magdalene Launderies.

• Derek Biddulph Photographic Collection:

A series of photographs from Galway based artist Derek Biddulph which document the city from the 1950s onwards

• Art Collection:

Tiger Lillies, a painting, and a carving of the Madonna and Child by artist Clare Sheridan, previous resident of the former mueum at Comerford House. Also, Cecil Maguire’s painting of ‘Bridie and Galway John outside Kenny’.

There are approximately 1,000 items in the total permenant collection.