5 minute read
The Story of Our Lady and St Patrick Primary School
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In 1876 the Sisters of Mercy opened a primary school beside their convent in John Street, Downpatrick. It had two rooms and 129 pupils in its first week, 20 boys and 109 girls.
In 1892 the De La Salle Brothers came to teach at the school. By 1936, numbers of pupils had increased so much that a new school was opened in Edward Street. Then, in 1951, 280 boys processed from the Edward Street school to a new school in St Dillon’s Avenue.
Meanwhile, the number of girls in the Convent of Mercy Primary School had also grown, so the school moved to the Edward Street site in 1976.
In 2011, 135 years after first opening, the two schools came together again at Edward Street, as Our Lady and St Patrick Primary School.
I remember it as a really nice place. It was like Nissan huts. Doors, you know that folded out the whole way down one side and that led onto a green area. There was an outside large sandpit. There were swings and one of the things that I remember was a huge tree trunk with nails in it and hammers and you could hammer the nails so this must have been a great thing you know for frustration or to feel very powerful.
I can remember people being sent to hammer things, you know. If they were running about or whatever.
We had little beds that were like little canvas cots. Looking back they remind me of maybe something that the forces would have had, you know little legs. You had a little symbol and my symbol was an umbrella. Your umbrella was on your blanket and the beds were stacked and they were all taken out and went down the main room for the sleep in the afternoon. You had a little towel and a face cloth with your symbol on but there wasn’t running water. They were like a little table with 4 aluminium basins. They would have poured the water in for you to wash your hands after you had been to the toilet. Kate Hanna (Description of Nursery school in Church Street) In those days, the boys usually spent the first 2 reception years in the convent school in Irish Street and after 2 years you are brought up to the Brothers and you began your education there. I remember you went in through the front door and up a set of steps into the classroom. It was the old convent school. It had big bench desks. It was timber floors and the desks in rows and each desk had a wee place for the ink and pencils. George Caffrey
It was sad to see it demolished. It was a 6 classroom school with a large assembly hall. There was a principal’s office in it with some stores. It was probably a modern 1950 school, central heating and each classroom was constructed in such a way, there was one with elevation and just glass, no windows and there was plenty of natural light getting in. I think they were the old herringbone floor, the parquet flooring. George Caffrey
We were invited here in 1892, by Bishop Henry and Father O’Kane – 3 Brothers came along. The first school, it was already there, it was in John Street where the present Patrician Youth Centre is. We were in that building until 1936 when we moved to the green site in Edward Street. The school continued there until we reached another green field site in 1951 because the numbers just grew and we got a new site. So the Brothers continued there with our lay colleagues until it closed in 2011. … Therefore the whole thing has come back to where we started you know. Brother Christopher Kelleher
The 3 schools, the boys primary school and the convent school and the secondary school, all went down to the minor hall behind the Cannon’s hall and the lunches were probably spread over from 12noon to 1pm.
The Edward Street School, 6th May 1979
4th Standard 1954 Teachers and pupils, Sisters of Mercy Convent School around 1880
STARTING SCHOOL 43
School dinners were free for some people. You had to pay your dinner money on a Monday morning. You got tickets and if you lost your tickets, that was it, you had no more. Each day you brought the ticket and gave it to the dinner lady and she took it off you. George Caffrey
It’s on the main Ballyduggan, Clough Road, out to Clough direction on the bad bend. I went there for a year or so. It was a small rural, country school. There were two classrooms in it and a fireplace at each gable end. The front was this blue porch and the sink. There were two outside toilets for the girls in the upper yard and one toilet for the male teacher and the boys in the lower yard. There was no central heating or anything in it and you had to walk about two miles to the school. So it was a change from the town school, it was moderately modern with radiators and heat, to go to a rural school with the just the fires each side. Bonecastle School – description by George Caffrey
Then you would have had the gypsies coming into school. We had quite a lot of them over the years. I remember one in particular in P5, Joseph you called him. He came into the school and one of the first experiences we had with the travelling community was the accent and coming in and not being able to understand what he was saying and how good at football he was, how much of an outdoors person he was. We all looked up to that and thought oh we want to be somebody like that. Unfortunately he didn’t stay for very long, he only stayed a couple of months and then periodically through the years we would have had quite a lot of members of the travelling community coming in. Paul Gilchrist
Illustrations by P7 Our Lady and St Patrick Primary School
