Heatons – The story of a building
LAST summer, the building which housed Heatons in Castlebar, located on the corner of Ellison and Duke Street, reopened as Sports Direct so I thought it might be interesting to have a look back at the building and its previous owners, writes Alan King.
Originally owned by the Earl of Lucan, one of the earliest occupants in 1840 was Dr. John C. Barrett who was the Medical Officer of the Workhouse (now the Sacred Heart Hospital). He had a fraught relationship with his employers – the Board of Guardians (Town Council of its day) and was often criticised at their weekly meetings.
He became the subject of two official inquiries in which he was vindicated before he finally resigned in 1863 and left town.
The next occupants were the McManus family. Their daughter Charlotte (Lottie), noted novelist and nationalist author, was born in the house before the family moved to Killeaden near Kiltimagh.
A niece, Emily McManus, wrote a best-selling account of her own time as Matron of Guys Hospital in London and passed away aged ninety-two years in the Sacred Heart Home in 1978.
The next owner was Patrick Quinn (1830-1898), a wealthy grazier who held a substantial amount of land around Castlebar and in County Meath.
He sold meat to his brother Michael who owned a butcher shop next door which supplied the town’s workhouse, infirmary and asylum. Michael was the father of Anna, who married Louis Brennan, inventor of the monorail, and of T.M. Quinn who was later Clerk of Castlebar Union.
The Quinns (who were cousins of Archbishop McHale of Tuam) had a butcher’s establishment in Ellison Street from the late 1700s. Michael’s niece Alice Quinn and later Michael Dever and William Irwin carried on a butcher’s business there until it closed in 2000. When Pat Quinn died in 1898, the building was bought by Dr. James J Hopkins, who coincidently also held the position of Medical Officer.
A member of an old Castlebar family - some of the family headstones in the Old Cemetery date from 1716, his mother was McAndrew from Main Street who lived where Fahey’s hardware shop is today.
The Hopkins family also owned property around the town including the area known locally as Hopkins’ Field/Road. When Hopkins sold the building, he moved to Hill House in Mountain View (where Dr. Martin Moran and his family later resided).
In 1900 Patrick Langan, a native of Killasser, Swinford, bought the three-storey building, which had eighteen rooms, and after extensive renovations, operated very successfully as a drapery/shoe business until its closure in 1967. It’s slogan ‘Langan’s – the Noted Boot People’ appeared in all its advertisements.
When Patrick died in 1952, his sister Mary Shanley took over the business until it was sold in 1970 to Heaton Bros. Ltd.
The existing building was demolished and rebuilt as the fine premises that’s there today by local building firm JP McCormack.Opened on June 30, 1972, the first manager was a Patrick Bergin who had previously managed Roche’s Stores in Dublin.
For an establishment which in the past has provided much needed employment in the town, the new undertaking represents a major boost for the town's retail sector and is wished all the best for the future.
(Alan King is a member of the staff of Mayo County Library).