Qualla: Glenamaddy https://qualla.com/glenamaddy en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:12 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/9/b/glenamaddy-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Glenamaddy https://qualla.com/glenamaddy Glenamaddy: Introduction https://qualla.com/glenamaddy/ Photo credit Trish Steel, CC BY-SA 2.0. Drive into Glenamaddy from any direction and you arrive at a crossroads - the R362 meeting the R364, fifty kilometres north-east of Galway city. Four roads, four directions, four pubs around a square. That geometry is so central to the town's identity that an Irish country song built around it became one of the most-played radio standards of the Connacht showband era. Four Country Roads turned a small east-Galway market town into a place strangers could sing about without ever having seen it. The town itself is small, a little over six hundred people, but its history runs deeper than the song suggests - back through penal-era hangings, medieval kingdoms, and a 1947 ballroom that briefly made Glenamaddy a destination for half of Connacht.

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Image: Trish Steel | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/9/b/glenamaddy-wp/gc9b-glenamaddy-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Glenamaddy: Valley of the Dogs, or Valley of the Black Plain https://qualla.com/glenamaddy/ Photo credit Sarah777 at English Wikipedia, Public domain. Even the name is contested. One reading takes Glenamaddy from Gleann na Madadh - madhadh deriving from madra, the Irish for dog - making the name Valley of the Dogs. Some say the shape of the local turlough, viewed from above, recalls a sleeping hound. Another reading proposes Gl...

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Image: Sarah777 at English Wikipedia | Public domain

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/9/b/glenamaddy-wp/gc9b-glenamaddy-valley-of-the-dogs-or-valley-of-the-black-plain.mp3 0:06 2 full Glenamaddy: The Priest's Valley https://qualla.com/glenamaddy/ Photo credit Sarah777 at English Wikipedia, Public domain. In the 1790s, during the penal era when Catholic mass was illegal in Ireland, a priest used to travel out to Esker to celebrate mass at a designated mass rock. On one particular Sunday, an informer told the authorities. Scouts were posted on the hilltops to watch for soldiers, bu...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/9/b/glenamaddy-wp/gc9b-glenamaddy-the-priests-valley.mp3 0:06 3 full Glenamaddy: From Workhouse to Bank Closures https://qualla.com/glenamaddy/ Photo credit Trish Steel, CC BY-SA 2.0. Glenamaddy proper grew up around the church built in the 1820s and the markets that gathered there afterwards. By 1853 a workhouse stood on the Creggs road, a grim Famine-era institution that took in the destitute when the potato failed. St. Patrick's Church replaced the old one ...

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Image: Trish Steel | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/9/b/glenamaddy-wp/gc9b-glenamaddy-from-workhouse-to-bank-closures.mp3 0:06 4 full Glenamaddy: The Esker Ballroom https://qualla.com/glenamaddy/ Photo credit Sarah777 at English Wikipedia, Public domain. On the Kilkerrin Road, in 1947, a great wooden dance hall called the Esker Ballroom was raised. Its first license application failed - no dances, no bar - and it sat empty for almost two years before the first dance was finally held in April 1949. Then it ran. Dances every second...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/9/b/glenamaddy-wp/gc9b-glenamaddy-the-esker-ballroom.mp3 0:06 5 full Glenamaddy: The Crossroads Today https://qualla.com/glenamaddy/ Photo credit Sarah777 at English Wikipedia, Public domain. Glenamaddy Community School opened in 2002, formed by the merging of Colaiste Seosaimh and St. Benin's Vocational School under the Sisters of Mercy and the county VEC. Glenamaddy GAA plays Gaelic football out of the parish. Glen Celtic kicks soccer. The Comer brothers, Luke and B...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/9/b/glenamaddy-wp/gc9b-glenamaddy-the-crossroads-today.mp3 0:06 6 full