The Augustinian Nuns arrived in Galway in 1646. They established a convent in Middle Street. This was known as Saint Monica’s Convent, and it was located on the site now occupied by the Mechanic’s Institute. The nuns suffered many hardships during the religious persecutions of the seventeenth century and had to go into hiding.
However, by the mid-eighteenth century they were re-established in the city. During this period, their convent was located roughly at the back of the King’s Head Pub on Middle Street. The convent was in decline by the 1830s. By 1842, there was only one sister remaining, Eleanor Connaughton Margaret Kelly. These were the last Augustinian nuns in Ireland. Due to the neglected state of the convent, the nuns moved to a house on Market Street (later the site of the Connacht Tribune). The convent on Middle Street lay derelict for many years and became the scene of ghostly apparitions.
There was a garage located directly opposite the old convent, which was owned by a man named Pa Hynes. The garage was on the site of the old Racquet Court Theatre. This man saw the ghosts of two nuns regularly gliding along the street near the convent. One he said was dressed in black and the other in white. On one particular occasion, he saw the nun in white coming towards him on the street. He stepped into his doorway, but she never passed by and when he looked again, she had disappeared. A woman named Margaret Griffin and her sister, Polly, often told people that they also saw the ghosts of the nuns on Middle Street. They believed that these were the spirits of the Augustinian nuns who once lived on the street.