The Story of Downpatrick Primary School

Downpatrick Primary School opened on its present site in Mount Crescent in 1975.

Th e school known as the Downpatrick County Primary School was created out of a number of national and public elementary schools in Downpatrick.

One of these was the Southwell School, one of the oldest schools in the town. In 1733 Edward Southwell established a charity school to educate ‘10 poor boys and 10 poor girls’ from the parish of Down. Local children were admitted to the school to be given a basic education and then trained for a variety of jobs. Th e museum has a register book from the school in its collection and in 1868-69 some of the children who were apprenticed included:

• Robert Skillen aged 14 apprenticed to Mr Traill, a valet • Robert Casement aged 14 apprenticed to Edward Heron, a saddler • John Th omson aged 15 apprenticed to John Lloyd, a cabinet maker • Isabella Hanna aged 15 apprenticed to Mrs Quaill, a bonnetmaker

In 1890 the school became part of the National School system and in the 1920s it became part of the Public Elementary School system. Boys and girls at the school continued to be educated separately with separate buildings and teachers.

In 1837 Fountain St school opened, known locally as the “Back Lane” school. Th e fi rst principal was Mr William Robinson. Th is school also entered the National School system at the end of the nineteenth century and continued in operation until 1959. Pupils from this school transferred to the Downpatrick County Primary School. Later a new two storey red brick building was erected in Mountcrescent and pupils from many of the smaller schools, including Southwell and the “Back Lane” school moved to be educated there in. Th is building continues to be used for education purposes and now houses Downpatrick Nursery school.

Th e closure of controlled schools in Inch, Ardglass, Strangford, Killough and Annadorn in the 1970s and 1980s brought an increase in the numbers of children at Downpatrick primary and today children at the school come from both urban and rural backgrounds to be educated together.

Today the school has over 200 pupils aged from 4 to 11. Th e school’s motto is INSPIRE: Improvement, Nurture, Success, Potential, Innovation, Responsibility, Endeavour.

Southwell School

Th e teacher was called Mrs. Scott and I remember her well. She would have lived over at the Almshouses, the Southwell buildings. Although she was

Downpatrick Primary School House Captains 38 STARTING SCHOOL

Fountain St School Christmas 1958 Southwell School boys, 1956 with teacher Anne Ellis

Downpatrick Primary School, 1980s

STARTING SCHOOL 39

Southwell School girls, 1947

Downpatrick Primary School, about 1982

40 the assistant teacher, the principal I suppose, the two buildings at the end of the Southwell buildings were for the principals of the boy’s school and the girl’s school. Th at’s where Mrs. Scott lived. Anne Ferguson

Whenever I started teaching in 1956 over in Southwell boys I had to walk the children who would be taking school dinners, walk them down the street to what was the church hall. Th ose children who were going for dinner I walked them down until they had their dinner and up again. Anne Ferguson, Southwell School

Th e classroom was like one big building. But we had our own entrance into it. And then there was a wooden partition went across to divide off us from the big ones. And I can’t remember a fi re at our end but there was a fi re at the big end. Th e caretaker who was Mr. Tommy Gray, used to come in the mornings and light the fi re and leave the coal beside the fi re for the day. And he brought the wee milk bottles in and sat them beside the fi re to warm for you coming in for break-time. Bobby Skillen Downpatrick

All Southwell children were nearly all Church of Ireland. Th e Back Lane would have been nearly all Presbyterian. Th e new school was a mixed school with all the diff erent protestant denominations.Nowadays the children are oft en mixed. Well schools are open to everybody. No principal can turn round and say well I’m not taking because he is a protestant or I can’t take him because he is a catholic. It is even multi-cultural. Bobby Skillen, Downpatrick

Southwell

It was quite a big room and there was a fi re. Once you went in you went into a sort of a hall, a big hall and that’s were all the coat hangers were, you hung your coats if you had any with you. Th en you went into another door and then you went into the classroom. And in the classroom there was a fi re at the one end of the school and down at the other end there was another fi re. Th ere was a divider that you could pull across the middle. And as I was telling you whenever the war was on and they bombed Belfast, a lot of them come to our school. And then they would pull this divider across and bring another teacher, that was Mrs. Woodrow.

…he had no hair so we just called him baldy Smith and he was from Cork. He lived in a house at the very end. At the very end one, there was a great big long garden which goes down round to the shopping centre. He grew everything in the garden and of course, he brought us all out to do work in the garden. So we maybe would have got a couple of hours a week, as we liked to get out of the school and work in the garden for a while. Joe Mc Comb

It was a red brick building; it is what is now the Sure Start building and the nursery school. It was a red brick building and I remember our playground in P1, 2 and 3 had a wall. We were so small and the wall seemed very, very high. A stonewall around it. Gill Kimpton, Downpatrick Primary School

Th e new school opened in 1975 …

Th ere was a wet area. It was called a wet area and we didn’t know what a wet area was. Th ere was a sink upstairs and you could wash out your paintbrushes. And conveniently, each class had its own wet area. Th ere was a door out of the classroom where you could go straight out to play at break time and it just seemed marvellous. You know we were in awe of the new school. Gill Kimpton, Downpatrick Primary School

Now, and there are so many different cultures and customs as well. For example, a friend of mine at Dundalk Primary has many Ugandan parents and in Uganda, it’s the height of bad manners for a child to have eye contact with an adult. So you have a child in school and the teacher is saying to her “Look at me when I am talking to you” and then the child goes home and the father says “Don’t you dare look at me like that.” So where is the kid supposed to be with all that. Many Polish families are here because they want their children to learn English, so many schools teach Irish and parents are coming in and saying I don’t want them to learn Irish I want them to learn English. They are going back to Poland to speak English; it is going to be a big advantage to them. Then religion is another one you will have a whole lot of people saying they don’t want their child doing sacraments or doing any religious education because they are Buddhist or Muslim or whatever – major, major implications for schools. That whole religious thing was never an issue in Downpatrick to be honest because people just came into the school because they liked the school. It didn’t matter what religion you were, you just came into the school. I mean at one stage I couldn’t really have told you how many protestant kids or catholic kids were in my school and that’s the way it should be. … Throw them all in and let them get on with it. It always worked for us in Downpatrick. Arthur Greenwood, Former Principal, Downpatrick Primary School

Illustrations by P7 Downpatrick Primary School