Time for solution to traffic gridlock at Mayo urban location

GALLOWS Hill, in the heart of Castlebar, is a location that is often at a standstill.

Traffic is grinding to a halt at peak times of the day as motorists converge from three sides.

It's a busy junction, with school traffic and people coming in from the significant residential areas out the Rathbawn Road going about their daily business of going to work and shopping.

Gallows Hill frequently gets mentioned at local municipal council meetings. Traffic lights and pedestrian crossings to address safety are among the suggestions pondered upon.

Hopefully the coming year will see the engineers coming up with a solution to try and ease pressure at this point.

Even if those ideas don't work out, surely anything is worth a try to rule it in or rule it out and bring some ease to users of the junction.

While sitting there in traffic, does the history of Gallows Hill ever enter people's heads, one wonders.

The street name Gallows Hill goes back several hundred years. The name, of course, comes from the fact there was a gallows on the hill at one time.

According to the website Street Names of Castlebar, the gallows were used widely from Anglo-Norman times up until 1873 when Ned Walsh, the last man executed in Castlebar, was hanged for murdering his wife.

People who were born and reared on Gallows Hill have an affinity with the name.

It is important that we remember our history and where we came from.

In the first flush of our freedom Spencer Street was renamed Pearse Street after Pádraig Pearse, the executed 1916 leader. The new name name never caught on. Old habits died hard.

Michael Hughes, a courageous and dedicated member of the Old IRA, was born and reared on Gallows Hill.

As a young man, Michael was a linotype operator (typesetter) in The Connaght Telegraph, an outstanding craftsman.