The very first shell manufactured by the munitions factory in Galway (now on display in the Galway City Museum).
The O’ Donoghue Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance in the National University of Ireland, Galway [NUIG] campus is a converted factory building that was originally used as a mill for bleach and flax. It had been built at around the same time as the original part of the university – the Quad – in the 1840s-1850s. The university acquired the building in 1987, back when Charles Haughey was Taoiseach of the country. The building had been vacant since Irish Metal Industries [IMI] closed – the factory had been manufacturing piping as well as shotgun ammunition in the Galway factory. That IMI factory had been opened in the summer of 1935 by Haughey’s father-in-law, Sean Lemass who was minister for Industry and Commerce (he would later become Taoiseach too).
O’ Donoghue Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance in the National University of Ireland, Galway
Lemass might have appreciated the history of the building more than most. His task in the 1930s was to inculcate an manufacturing industrial base for the Irish Free State, which was just a decade old at the time. The building had been used during the War of Independence to garrison British troops – Lemass had fought in both the Easter Rising and the War of Independence. And before that, the building had been used as a munitions factory during the First World War.
World War One created an insatiable demand for artillery shells and a number of factories were set up in Ireland to help meet the demand. The factories employed many people (1,200 in Dublin, 150 in Cork, 600 in Waterford and 115 in Galway). Though conscription was never introduced , the factories in Ireland employed mainly women (rather than men of fighting age). However, when the war ended, so did the demand for blowing people and things up with artillery. Most employees were laid off, and attempts were made to find another purpose for the factories.
This weekend, a century ago, the factories were shuttered for good.