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Let's take leap back into the past this week to look at what Wexford Corporation were up to over the years.
1888 - October - Land in other parts of the town was mortgaged to raise the £ 2,500 needed to build 26 labourers dwellings at the Old Pound.
1889 - It was decided to open the new cemetery at Crosstown and not at Mulgannon as previously considered.
1902 - August - There was much discussion about gas lamps at Hill Street and Roche's Road. At Roche's Road the problem revolved around which should get priority, lighting the steps from Roche's Terrace or the church yard opposite.
LOCAL CHARGES: Howard Rowe proposed that the practice of emptying dustbins by Corporation men and cars, for free, be stopped and a yearly charge imposed.
Alderman Furlong said that Mr. Hughes had suggested the same before and was laughed at.
1914 - The Corporation built 44 new houses in locations opposite the Tate School, at Hill Street and Westgate.
A 3 roomed house cost £ 125 to build and was rented at 3/= (15p) per week. The 4 roomed houses cost £140 and the rent was 3/1 per week.
These houses cost £10 more than those already built at Distillery Road.
Eleven 5 roomed houses at Newtown Road would cost £180 each while four 5 roomed houses of superior quality proposed for Westgate would cost £ 216 each.
An estimated 250 to 260 homes were needed to house "the working classes of the town".
April - The Corporation refused permission for Miss Chenevix of the Irish Women's Reform League to use The Town Hall, "in furtherance of the suffragette propaganda".
July - Robert Coffey sought election for St. Mary's Ward with an advertisement villifying "the scourge of Larkinism which brought so much misery and ill feeling into Wexford". He called for support from "genuine trade unionists in the absence of a Workingman Candidate". He said that Larkin preached "pernicious and socialist doctrine...to upset the pleasant relations which had existed until the advent of his Lieutenant P.T. Daly into town a couple of years ago". This is an interesting reference to the Lockout of 1911 only three years after the event.
September - The Post Master asked for Corporation permission to close post offices at Barrack Street and North Main Street at 7.30 p.m. instead of 8 p.m. They agreed.
A letter from M.J. O'Connor once more raised the possibility of opening a new road from George Street to "the road at the Mercy Convent". He stated that this would open up land at the south west of John street for development. This would eventually become John's Road.
1939 - For houses at Davitt Road and William Street, the cost of Gas Company piping for six lights per house was £1 each after base pipes being laid.
The names of people applying for Corporation houses were published in the newspaper reports of the meeting along with how the councilors voted on the allocation.
The Corporation discussed the parking of cars in the horse and cart tracks at Anne Street, causing the carts to have to use the middle of the road. These tracks were specifically provided to allow horses to negotiate the upper part of the street.
Winter Relief work was used to surface town streets and to lay footpaths.
Six and a half acres of land was purchased from Robert Harvey and another plot from Rev. Doran of St. Peter's College for the new road between Summerhill and Whitemill.