The Story of Millisle Primary School

Millisle is a seaside village on the Ards peninsula in Co Down.

For a long time there was no school building in Millisle, so classes were held in different houses. By 1840, the Presbyterian church gave its “Retiring House” for use as a school. The teacher was an 18 year old called J Mc Meekin and there were just 42 pupils. Fees were charged and it cost three and a half pence for reading and two and a half pence for writing lessons.

A teacher’s house was acquired and rented to the teacher for five guineas per year.

Amy Carmichael, a Christian missionary to India, was born in the village in 1867.

By 1867, after efforts made by Rev John Hanna, and donations from the Carmichael family and the general public, a new village school was built in the centre of Main Street. It was known as Millisle National School and served the Millisle community until the present larger school was built on the Abbey Road in 1959.

There are currently around 190 pupils on the roll, due to the growing local population. The current principal is Mrs Linda Patterson.

There was a large building at the other side of the stone building and there were two classrooms in it too but that was for the older people you know, long and cold. There were big potbelly stoves in them, one in each room. There were two rooms and whenever a cousin of mine left, I got the job of lighting them in the mornings. They were about four foot high with a big guard round them. Because I was the stoker, I was the only one allowed to go near them. And I was only about nine or ten when I started to light them. It was good fun and it got you off your first class. Mervyn O’Neill I just lived up what was the Shore Road which is now the Abbey Road where the school is… they were like Nissan huts and they had a sort of a big fire, big coke fire in the middle of them. Rita Gamble

P3 was Mrs Radcliffe and I can remember she was very much into our tables. And we had to stand behind the chair every morning and rhyme off our tables and a hymn. You normally learnt the verse of a hymn the night before so that had to be said then after your tables. Then P4 was on the hill with the steps up to the hut with Mrs Leake. And I loved Mrs Leake and I loved her class. And she always remembered me because I had the same birthday as her son. P5 was upstairs and you always loved to get upstairs in school because you thought you were getting so grown up then. Gillian Mc Gimpsey

Usually I would have sat beside Meryl Turkington, there was Muriel McFall, there was Joan Bennet, John Warden and a lot of people from Childhaven that came to the school… Yes there was Mrs. Boyd and then there was I think after her came Miss Coulter and then there was Miss Williamson and then I went from the Nissan huts to the school itself, and Mr. Palmer was there and then I can remember Mr. Walker coming. He sort of came in his army uniform, he was in the army. … I can always remember Mr. Walker, he was a great sort. He was like an artist type and he was a great writer. I can always remember us writing and then you had to do lines and lines of it. It was like “procrastination is the thief of time”. I can remember doing that and doing sort of long sheets of it. Rita Gamble

Millisle School, about 1910 Millisle School, 1924 Millisle School, about 1954

I loved Mr. Williams when he was teaching us in P6 and P7. He was just a brilliant teacher and he brought the school on a lot. He had set up a tuck shop and saving schemes and stuff like that. I remember having to go once a week to the bank. The bank came to the village once a week and you had to take this big brief case down the main street to the bank to lodge the money from the school tuck shop. Gillian Mc Gimpsey

Mr Walker with class, 1968 Millisle Primary School

Illustrations by P5 Millisle Primary School