Dunmanway Historical Association Logo with a transparent background
Teagmháil
An illustration for a plaque titled "The Market House & Town Commerce". On the left, a stone wall features a sign reading "BREWERY LANE". A sweeping line transitions to the right, showing a sack of grain, a traditional street lamp, and an old stone building with posters displayed on the front.

Plaque 2: Time Travellers Guide 2

Plaque 2:  The Market Square & Commercial Development over the centuries

 

School:

Kilnadur National School

 

Characters:

  • Seán
  • Aoife

 

Setting:

The scene is set in 1972 – there is a sound of a digger demolishing the Market House.

 

Narrator : It is March1972 – there is a sound of a digger demolishing a building- in fact it is a digger demolishing the centre of Dunmanway Market Square, which comprised the Market House and  several other buildings, a public house, a veterinary practice, the market house and Paris house. Two children Sean and Aoife are standing in the Square watching the bulldozers in action.

Seán: Look at that, Aoife. The poor Market House is getting a big thud from the bulldozer.

Aoife: I can’t believe they’re knocking it down. It’s been here since the early 1800s. 

Seán: Mam said it might even have bits of the old MacCarthy Castle in it. Imagine recycling a whole castle into a Market House. That’s extreme upcycling !

Aoife: “New Market House: now with extra castle in it!”  – I wonder what people said about it when they built it ?

(Bulldozer roars.)

Seán: There goes the mid-18th and 19th‑century walls… crash, bang, history in a dusty heap.

Aoife: Do you know what it was like here on market day long ago?

Seán: Bit like today, only with fewer cars and more cows. And posher writers. That fella William Makepeace Thackeray came through in 1842. He said the stagecoach only did seven miles an hour.

Aoife: Thackeray saw the Market House full of people, peasants in blue cloaks, women selling buttermilk, bullocks’ hearts and livers… and dried mackerel. So basically, a shop without a fridge.

Seán: And without the smell control. Tuesdays were market days, and there were big cattle fairs too – May 4th, first Tuesday in July, September 17th and November 26th. Imagine all the mooing.

Aoife: And all the pooping- horrible smells from chickens, ducks, geese , cows, pigs you name it-

(Both laugh.)

Seán: At the crossroads of the main streets stood this big Market House. It had a butter market, a constabulary station, courts, and even a victualler’s shop. 

Aoife: A family called the O’Sheas lived upstairs. They took the town tolls until they were evicted in 1871 by Captain Shuldham. There were riots and everything. Imagine being thrown out of your house and it turning into a corn store.

Seán: Then in the early 1900s it got even busier: vet’s practice, a cinema upstairs, boxing gym, and later a Local Defence Force training hall. And a drapery called Paris House. Dunmanway’s own mini‑Paris.

Aoife: By the 1950s, the bottom bit stopped being a market and was just a store. No one thought the bulldozers would come next.

(Bulldozer knocks another chunk.)

Seán: Somewhere near Park Road there used to be a brewery in 1831 making 2,600 barrels of porter and ale a year. And tanyards down Tanyard Lane, and boulting mills grinding flour.

Aoife: Then there were the streetlights and the first electricity in 1911 from Gillespie’s powerhouse. All because someone thought Dunmanway was important enough for a 20‑horsepower unit. Very fancy.

Seán: And look – D. Crowley’s shop is still trading in the Square. Mrs. Dans lives on!

Aoife: Buildings fall, but the stories don’t- they live on in our town.

 

A sepia-toned historical photograph capturing a bustling scene from Market Day in Dunmanway on 3rd February 1942. In the foreground, a traditional wooden two-wheeled horse cart sits parked near the mud-splattered wing mirror of a vintage automobile. A large crowd of townsfolk, mostly men wearing caps and overcoats, fills the wide street area. They are gathered near rows of wooden crates and market goods laid out in front of a terrace of three-storey shop buildings.
Market Day in Dunmanway on 03rd February 1942
A sepia-toned street-level photograph from Market Day in Dunmanway on 3rd February 1942. In the background, the prominent signboards for "John Atkins", "China & Class", "Furniture Warehouse", and "Agricultural Warehouse" are visible above the shopfronts. A horse-drawn cart loaded with goods stands in the centre of the street, while a delivery van with "Ariel Self Raising Flour" painted on its side is parked to the right. Townsfolk move between the vehicles in the foreground.
Market Day in Dunmanway on 03rd February 1942
A sepia-toned photograph showing a specific trading area during Market Day in Dunmanway on 3rd February 1942. A woman wrapped in a long, thick dark cloak or shawl stands on the left, looking toward a temporary livestock or goods enclosure made from low wooden slatted crates. On the right, another person carrying bundles walks past a large burlap sack resting on the ground. In the blurred background, other traders, horses, and carts line the busy street.
Market Day in Dunmanway on 03rd February 1942
A sepia-toned candid photograph from Market Day in Dunmanway on 3rd February 1942. The image highlights a woman standing in the left foreground wearing a traditional, heavy, dark Irish hooded cloak that falls to her ankles. She is conversing with another woman in a winter overcoat and hat. To the right, a simple market stall structure made from wooden planks and covered with a light-coloured canvas sheet stands over wooden crates and straw scattered on the ground.
Market Day in Dunmanway on 03rd February 1942
A colour photograph from the early 1970s showing the historic Market House building in Dunmanway prior to its demolition. The two-storey building has a white, rough-textured stucco exterior with a tall gabled profile and a central upper window. A lower single-storey section clad in dark reddish-brown corrugated iron extends to the right, decorated with various event posters and a "Calor Gas" sign. A young girl is walking past the building on the tarmac.
Market House in Dunmanway
A colour photograph from the 1970s capturing a vintage light green saloon car parked in front of the old Market House building. The main building features a white-washed, heavily weathered stone exterior with a large slate roof and a single small, red-trimmed window on the upper floor. Extending forward is a lower, single-storey lean-to structure clad in dark brown vertical wooden panelling and topped with its own moss-covered slate roof. An old, faded advertisement sign is visible on the far left wall under an overcast sky.
Market House in Dunmanway
A colour photograph from the early 1970s capturing the old Market House in Dunmanway. The building's white-washed stone wall is heavily weathered and cracked, showing patches of exposed stonework near the corner. It features small timber-framed windows with red paint and a matching red wooden door on the ground floor, alongside a second-floor doorway opening directly into the air. A row of colourful terraced shops stands further down the street.
Market House in Dunmanway
A black and white photograph capturing a later stage of the demolishing of Market House in 1972. The large Ruston-Bucyrus excavator uses its heavy bucket to tear down the front facade of the building, exposing the internal stone walls and plaster of the upper storey. Rubble from the crumbling structure spills onto the road behind the remnants of the old pub fronting that reads "WINE" and "SPIRITS". A workman stands in the foreground observing the progress.
The demolition of the old Market House by a tracked excavator in 1972
A black and white photograph documenting another angle of the demolishing of Market House in 1972. A massive pile of broken stones, mortar, and slate fills the foreground, flanked by two metal oil drums. In the background, the metal bucket of a mechanical excavator crashes through the sloped roof and stone walls of the white-washed structure, sending up a cloud of dust. A bystander with his hands behind his back watches from the left.
The demolition of the old Market House by a tracked excavator in 1972
A black and white documentary photograph capturing the demolishing of Market House in 1972. A large Ruston-Bucyrus 20-H tracked excavator is positioned in the street, using its hydraulic arm to break down the stone chimney and upper roof structure of the old building. Debris and shattered masonry are piled at the base of the wall, which still shows old painted signs reading "WINE" and "SPIRITS". Two local men stand at a safe distance watching the work.
The demolition of the old Market House by a tracked excavator in 1972
A high-angle aerial photograph displaying the reorganised Dunmanway Market Square after the Market House was demolished. The centre of the wide street has been transformed into an open parking plaza with painted white lines, featuring a new triangular concrete traffic island with a small garden bed. The square is enclosed by the multi-storey John Atkins shopfront buildings and red-roofed warehouses on one side, and a row of colourful terraced townhouses on the other.
Aerial view of the new market square after the old market house was demolished