This week I return to the amalgamation of the
Christian Brothers Secondary School and Scoil Mhuire, both 19th
century institutions which since their foundation have been an integral part of
the educational life of Athy. Indeed by
dint of their influence both schools have been in their time an integral part
of the social life of this area. I was
privileged to receive my early education, both primary and secondary, in the
local Christian Brothers School and so am more than an interested onlooker as
the date of the amalgamation of my old school with Scoil Mhuire draws near.
Until the 1790’s the children of Athy town
received no formal education. The Church
of England did not have a parish school at that time and no Catholic was
licensed to teach his co-religious. Only
the children of well-to-do families could afford to attend the fee paying private
schools of which there were a number in Athy at the end of the 18th
century. In 1870 the local Church of
England Rector set up a parish school, which for a time at least was located in
the Town Hall, but later moved to the three storey house presently standing at
the corner of Meeting Lane and Emily Square.
In 1811 the Society for Promoting the Education
of the Poor of Ireland, commonly called the “Kildare
Place Society” was founded. Its stated purpose was to afford the same
facilities for education to all classes of professing Christians without any
attempt to interfere with their religious beliefs. It is from the records of that society that
we first learned of the existence of a Catholic free school in Athy. Known also as the “Athy Poor School” it had as a teacher, John Goold, who in January
1823 received a payment of £11.4.4½ from the Kildare Place Society. Rev.
Charles Bristow, the Church of England curate, received a grant of £3.1.9 that
same year for running a school in Athy Gaol which was located on the Carlow
Road.
The building of the Athy Poor School premises was attributed to Colonel Fitzgerald of
Geraldine House and it was described in the 1824 Parochial Returns as “a substantial building of stone and lime.” Located at the North East corner of the
present St. Michael’s Church, it was funded by local subscriptions under the
management of the Parish Priest and a Committee of twelve local men. Patrick O’Rourke and Ann Doogan were teachers
in the school in 1824 and on the school rolls were 232 boys and 96 girls, with
an average attendance each day of 140 boys and 35 girls.
By 1835 the Athy
Poor School was known as the National
Day School and the teachers there were George and Elizabeth Carmichael who
had 168 boys and 76 girls on the school rolls.
The average attendance in those days, when compulsory school attendance
was still a long way off, was 86 boys and 42 girls. Sometime after 1827, but before 1835, a new
schoolhouse was built at the corner of Stanhope Street and Stanhope Place. It would seem, although I cannot be certain,
that the original school building continued to operate as a girls school, while
the new building housed the boys school.
Despite the progress made in providing education
for the children of Athy the local Catholic clergy were anxious to desecularise
education and bring it more under the control and influence of the Catholic
Church. A meeting of the local
parishioners was held in the National Day
School in the spring of 1843 to further the idea of establishing a convent
in Athy for a teaching order of nuns.
The prime movers in this were Anna Goold, who subsequently gifted her
house in Stanhope Place to the local Parish Priest, Rev. W. Gaffney, a curate
of St. Michael’s, the Fitzgerald family of Geraldine House and Patrick Maher of
Kilrush. That meeting resulted in the
building of a convent and a new school in the grounds of St. Michael’s Parish
Church which the Sisters of Mercy took possession of on 10th October
1852. The first of the two Catholic educational
institutions which are now about to amalgamate had arrived in Athy. The Sisters of Mercy in their early years in
the town concentrated on teaching primary school children, but after some time
they opened a private secondary school which later became a public school,
known today as Scoil Mhuire.
In the meantime the Christian Brothers were
invited by Archbishop Cullen to open a school for boys in Athy and they were facilitated in doing so by
the gifting of Greenhills House by the Sisters of Mercy which was to become the
Christian Brothers Monastery. Again,
like the Sisters of Mercy, the educational facilities provided by the Christian
Brothers when their school opened on 19th August 1862 was for
primary school pupils and it was some time before more senior boys were catered
for.
To complete the educational framework in Athy,
mention must be made of the Model School opened in 1852 and the Vocational
School, as it was then called, which commenced in November 1900. The District Model School was built by the
Commissioners of National Education in Ireland on a five acre site which was donated
by the Duke of Leinster in 1848. The
building of the school commenced two years later and it was opened on 12th
August 1852. It catered for infants, as
well as boys and girls, and combined the teaching of children with the
preliminary training of teachers known as candidate teachers.
The school was non denominational and the first two school principals, John
Walsh who had previously taught in Dublin and Elizabeth Reilly who had been a
teacher in Ballinvally National School, were Catholics. The success of the Model School is shown by
the numbers enrolling in the school. On
it’s first day 13 boys, 1 girl and 1 infant were enrolled and by the following
February the school had 207 on it’s books and 281 by September 1853. In each succeeding year up to 1856 when 567
children were enrolled the Model School attracted more and more of the local
children to its non denominational classes.
It achieved its highest enrolment in 1858 when 582 children were listed
on the school register.
It was the success of the District Model School
which prompted Archbishop Cullen to invite the Christian Brothers to Athy. The Irish Hierarchy’s disapproval of the
Model schools was set out in a letter to the Commissioners of the National
School which described the schools as “intrinsically
anti-Catholic”. The fragmentation on
religious grounds of the educational system in Athy dates from that period.
The Vocational Schooling system first came into
being following the passing of the Technical Instructions Act in 1899 which
when adopted by Athy Urban District Council was followed by the setting up of a
technical instruction committee. A Technical
School was opened in part of the old National School at the corner of Stanhope
Street and Stanhope Place and there it remained until a new Technical School
was opened on the Carlow Road on 5th December 1940.
The amalgamation of Scoil Eoin and Scoil Mhuire
brings together two institutions with a shared history extending over 301 years
and marks the final chapter in the history of the Sisters of Mercy and the
Christian Brothers in the town of Athy.
The celebrations marking this important occasion commence with the
opening of an exhibition in the Heritage Centre this Wednesday and the
launching of a book of memoirs compiled by transition students of Scoil
Eoin. Other events take place during the
week and on Saturday, May 12th a celebratory dinner will be held in
the Clanard Court Hotel which past pupils of Scoil Eoin and the old secondary
school in St. John’s Lane will attend.
The closing of Scoil Mhuire and Scoil Eoin and
their coming together as Ardscoil Na Trionoide, catering for boys and girls, is
a huge advance in our local education story which started over 200 years ago
with the Athy Poor School.
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