Galway City’s oldest pharmacy closes its doors

After nearly eighty years doling out advice and medicine to the people in ‘The West’ area of the city, the oldest pharmacy in Galway has shut up shop.

O’Beirn’s Pharmacy on Henry Street pulled down its shutters last week after Allcare, the franchise group which owned it, decided the branch was no longer viable.

Pharmacist Mark O’Flaherty and two assistants – Corina Walsh and Hayley Colman – will lose their jobs. The chemist was opened by pharmacist and medical doctor Seamus O’Beirn on April 12, 1935.

According to the archives of the Connacht Tribune, he opened it in the hope that some of his large family might take up the trade as adults.

He died just six months after the chemist began trading, leaving a wife and 10 children behind. But his plan worked – two of his daughters, Eibhlin and Síle, qualified as pharmacists and kept the family tradition of healing alive for a second generation. In fact, six of the 10 children studied medicine in one form or another.

And it continued into a third generation, when Síle’s daughter Brigid (pronounced Bríd) joined the company in 1972 and took over from her mother and aunt in the 1990s.

She qualified as an assistant pharmacist and ran the business until selling up at the height of the Celtic Tiger in 2005 when pharmacy chains were opening up shops all over the country.

For years, customers would travel from as far away as Connemara to visit the pharmacy, such was the loyalty built up over the years.

The little pharmacy evolved to sell luxury items like cosmetics and, in the past 20 years, health foods and alternative remedies.

When O’Beirn’s first opened its doors, antibiotics did not exist and pharmacists had to make up their own prescriptions and tonics.

It also became known as the place to buy theatrical, stage and special effects makeup through Dr O’Beirn’s connections with the stage. He had co-founded An Taibhdhearc Theatre, the national Irish language company, on Middle Street.

Mark O’Flaherty, a native of Naas, Co Kildare, was appointed to manage the practice nine years ago.

“We were kept going. We wouldn’t have been as busy as somewhere like Salthill with a big passing trade, we were a little off the beaten track, but we had a strong local trade,” reflected Mark.

Having bought a home in Galway, Mark tried to get other work here but has been unsuccessful in securing another position. He will move to Dublin where locum work is available.

“It was a great place to work. It was a lovely small community, you felt a part of a really tight-knit community here in The West. There have been a lot of changes here, a lot of older people are passing on, houses are being sold up and rented to students so the demographic is changing.”

Three pharmacies still trade within five minutes walk of the Henry Street institution – Moughan’s on Cookes Corner, Pat Hogan’s on Fr Griffin Road and the Crescent Pharmacy.