The school houses featured in this blog stimulate a significant amount of public engagement with the school house project, and it is through this engagement that the narratives of these buildings are teased out by the very people who are connected with them.

Over the past year I’ve been receiving more and more correspondence from both past pupils, and the children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren of past pupils who have been sharing stories and experiences of their time in school, and their connections with the buildings.

What has struck me about these emails is the broad geographical spread of the responses, with visitors to the blog coming from just over 145 countries so far. This is unsurprising considering the long tradition of emigration from Ireland. From these small rural school houses children took what they had learned and went out to find fortune and to explore the greater world.

The tradition of emigration has emerged as an over-arching theme in this project, and to demonstrate this I would like to invite anyone who has a connection with these school houses to please send me a local postcard from where in the world you live now. The postcards will be featured in the forth-coming publication in 2018.  Please include the school you are connected to, some brief details of your connection, contact details  (these will not be shared) and any other details you like. 

You can send these to :

Enda O’Flaherty 

C/O Rubicon Heritage 

Unit 2, Europa Enterprise Park 

Midleton 

Co. Cork 

Ireland