Ballynacourty National School, Ballynacourty townland, Co. Waterford

(dated 1885)

NGR: 229596, 092581

Ballynacourty National School is situated just a few miles outside the seaside town of Dungarvan in Co. Waterford. The school lies in the townland of Ballynacourty, just a few hundred metres from the shore with the former Coast Guard Station lying to the southwest. During the early part of the 20th century, a row of terraced houses lined the nearby pier, and undoubtedly the local children who lived there attended Ballynacourty school. In 1937 the Irish Folklore Commission, in collaboration with the Department of Education and the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation, initiated a revolutionary scheme in which schoolchildren were encouraged to collect and document folklore and local history. At this time, the Irish language was considerably stronger in the area and entries for Ballynacourty (recorded as Baile na Cúirte, Dúngarbhán – the school master being Muiris Breannóc) were in both the Irish and English language:

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Affane/Sluggara National School, Sluggara townland, Co. Waterford

(dated 1914)

NGR: 212065, 98137

Affane/Sluggara National School is situated in the townland of Sluggara just east of the Blackwater River in Co. Waterford, not far from the N72 national route, and just southeast of the village of Cappoquin. Today this small village straddles Bóthar an Mhachaire and comprises little more than a church, the former school house, and the ruins of the former school masters house on. At the time of the 1911 census in Ireland, just five families are recorded living in the townland. Providing further social and historical context to the National School is Affane House situated nearby. It was the property of Samuel J. Power in 1906 and valued at £32. Brady notes that the house incorporates material from the late seventeenth century house owned by the Greatrakes famly.

The school building remains in use today as a parish hall, and comprises a detached four-bay single-storey national school, dated 1914, on a T-shaped plan retaining original fenestration with two-bay single-storey gabled projecting lower shared porch to centre. It has a pitched slate roof on a T-shaped plan with red clay ridge tiles, red brick running bond chimney stacks, cut-stone coping to gables, and cast-iron rainwater goods on timber corbels. There are unpainted rendered walls with cut-limestone corbels supporting gables, and cut-stone date stone/plaque. The windows are square-headed openings with cut-stone sills, and 6/9 timber sash windows. There are square-headed door openings with tongue-and-groove timber panelled doors. The building is set back from road in its own grounds with a random rubble stone boundary with lime mortar, and red brick quoins to the ends, cut-stone coping, and rubble stone piers with wrought iron gate. To the rear, a high dividing wall runs down the centre of the schoolyard segregating boys and girls. Continue reading Affane/Sluggara National School, Sluggara townland, Co. Waterford →