Ireland | Disused School Houses – Home Page

Tullystown National School, Tullystown Cross, Co. Westmeath

(dated: c.1840)

NGR: 244969, 279596

In 1837 the travelling antiquarian Samuel Lewis described the topography of Co. Westmeath as ‘diversified by hill and dale, highly picturesque in many parts, and deficient in none of the essentials of rural beauty, but timber’. Travelling north from the boglands of Co. Offaly into Co. Westmeath, there is certainly a notable change in the landscape – the brown watery flat-lands give way to green hillsides and winding roads which navigate the undulating farmland. Docile cattle peer over low stone walls, and traffic is largely agricultural.

Continue reading Tullystown National School, Tullystown Cross, Co. Westmeath →

Whiddy Island National School, Trawnahaha townland, Whiddy Island, Co. Cork

(dated 1887)

NGR: 096974, 049791

Whiddy Island is a small, near-shore island located at the head of Bantry Bay in Co. Cork. Not far from the modern quayside and in the townland of Trawnahaha is a small late 19^th-century one-roomed school house overlooking Bantry Bay below. Painted bright blue with a white lime-wash, in recent years the building had been used as a local museum though it has now fallen into a state of disrepair.

Like so many offshore islands in Ireland, the permanent population has dwindled through the 20^th century and can no longer support a local national school. John Chambers’ “Islands – Change in Population 1841 – 2011” clearly shows the island’s decline from a peak population of 729 in 1841:

Year	Pop	±%
1841	729	–
1851	561	−23.0%
1901	259	−53.8%
1951	104	−59.8%
1996	34	−67.3%
2002	29	−14.7%
2006	22	−24.1%
2011	20	−9.1%