From cycling to work in Tuam to No 1 Eyre Square

AFTER over 70 years behind various counters and office desks, it’s been a long, winding, but very successful road for Cloonaglasha-born May Richardson.
May started out cycling to work from Belclare to Fahy & Co, The Square Tuam, and ended up as co-owner, with her late husband Tim, of one of Galway’s most iconic pubs — Richardson’s, Number 1 Eyre Square.
While Richardson’s is a pub full of rare memorabilia, photographs and artifacts from Ireland and abroad, the item that catches the eye first is suspended from the ceiling beside the counter. It’s the bicycle that 91-year-old May used to get to work in Tuam, and later Galway, as a teenager in the 1940s.
“I went to national school in Belclare and then to Miss Waldron’s Commercial School at Bishop Street, Tuam.
“After that I got a job in the office of Fahy & Co, The Square, Tuam for a year and a half at ten shillings a week (50 pence) cycling in and out from Castlehacket every day. The bike that is hanging up in the pub is the one I used,” says May.

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