Sunday Independent St Brigid’s feature 02.02.2025
Photo: Derek Speirs Sara Colohan A young nurse at St Brigid’s Mental Hospital in Ballinasloe, Co Galway slipped out of her uniform and into her Sunday best. Her long shift over, she was going on a first date with a handsome male nurse she’d met at work. As she passed through the women’s ward, one of the patients, distressed at the sight of her finery, hurled a slop bucket in her direction. Frozen in shock, she stood drenched in urine. Her colleagues quickly came to her rescue, washing her down and finding a fresh dress for her to wear. Against the odds, she made it to her date on time. That nurse was my grandmother, Annie Colohan. She and my grandfather, both psychiatric nurses at the hospital, married a year later in 1933 – 100 years after St Brigid’s was built. Their story was one of the first I heard about ‘The Big House’ and it planted the seed of a lifelong curiosity about the place and the many lives it touched. St Brigid’s, which closed in 2013, wa...
