Liam hits right note as Galway Town Crier

Date Published: {J}

Have bell, will travel’, is an unusual motto but one that applies to Liam Silke, who is the city’s Town Crier, albeit an unofficial one.

‘Oyez, oyez, Hear ye, hear ye,’ is the loud refrain delivered regularly by Liam, who has the strong voice for it, as he leads parades or enters a room to announce a newly married couple or the start of an event.

Liam first spotted the old Town Crier’s bell in Dillon’s Claddagh Museum. It gave him the idea to reinstate the position and make himself available for appropriate events.

The last Town Crier the city had was Ned Joyce, who died in 1979, so it was timely for Liam to take over the role, when he returned from Dublin to his native city in the early 1990s.

Liam approached it with gusto, acquiring the costume, complete with triton hat, and buying his own bell. The original bell remains in Dillon’s Museum.

The Town Crier role fits in well with his forays into the world of theatre, though his acting was through the Murder Mystery weekends he ran with his friend, the late Brian Walsh.

Liam adopts the role of Town Crier for corporate events and festivals, but would love if it was recognised by the local authority, so that his services would be used for promotional purposes.

Taking on the role in Galway wasn’t his first brush with being Town Crier – he invented one for the Dalkey Festival many years ago as a fundraiser. At the time he operated a restaurant in the Dublin village.

Originally from the West in Galway city, Liam came from a big family who owned the Marian Cafe in William Street, where he waited tables after school. This gave him a taste of his future career in the hospitality and catering business.

Liam has run his own restaurant, he worked for a number of years in the PV Doyle hotel group, he returned to college and used his life experiences to lecture hotel and catering students.

Now, having returned to his roots, he lives in Munster Avenue, where he is very involved with Age Action. At 71, he hates ageism and believes that as long as people are fit and able, there are no limitations to what they can do.

“I promote Age Action as best as I can when I can,” he says.

Five years ago he became a qualified Fáilte Ireland tour guide and does walking tours of the city, which he loves. Again, it’s something he does with gusto.

In his youth he left UCG because he couldn’t get into his chosen course. “I enjoyed the good life too much, the rugby, the craic . . . and the Arts course was in Irish,” he laughs.

“You have to travel the world to find out where your home is. I would have stayed in Galway, grey as it was in the 50s but as soon as I got an opportunity I was gone.

Aged 19, he went to the Shannon Hotel training college where he discovered his niche. From there he was sent to Switzerland and Sweden as an exchange student. His first job was in England, where he spent ten years.

He had met his wife Niamh, a Dubliner, in Shannon and they settled in Dalkey where they reared three children and opened one of the village’s first restaurants, in 1974. For ten years previously, Liam had worked in the Burlington and then the Green Isle Hotel, both in the Doyle group.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.