The School House in Ireland: Architecture and Meaning (contd…)
The original architect’s drawings for Derryneen National School, in Co. Galway drawn up in 1914 (National Archives OPW5HC4872)
School house designs supplied by the OPW toward the end of the 19th century vary in form but maintain the same basic features; an entrance porch, a cloakroom, the classroom, tall sash windows, an open fireplace and high ceilings, wainscoting on the lower parts of the internal walls, a raised wooden floor, ventilation features etc. The architectural drawings were supplied and distributed by the OPW to locations around the country, and for this reason you can often find identical school buildings at opposite ends of the country. There were a variety of designs available through the decades, and it is often possible to date the construction of a school house to within a few years based on the form of the building.
The partially removed wainscotting from the walls of Lettermore National School in Co. Donegal built in 1909
Many of the school houses that were built ‘to-plan’ were extended and modified and many remain in use today. Often a modern school building will have an original 19th-century construction at its core. It is interesting that the many of the principle features of the early schools have been retained such as high ceilings and windows. These features reflect the ecclesiastical and monastic origins of school house design that persist to this very day. They also reflect the continuing control that Churches had on the school system.
Although there were architecturally elaborate school buildings (most often patronised by a local land owner), they more frequently comprised functional structures, usually lacking architectural ornamentation, and built to serve a small local population. Continue reading The School House in Ireland: Architecture and Meaning – Part 3→
The School House in Ireland: Architecture and Meaning (contd…)
What makes a building important?
Contemporary 19thand early 20th-century sources in Britain and the US (Bernard 1848; Patterson 1875; Shawkey 1910) provide, first-hand insights into the ideological and societal backgrounds behind school architecture of the period. In Britain Weiner (1994) dedicates significant wordcount to architecture and social reform in late-Victorian London from the perspective of school design, however it is part of an over-arching examination of the subject as a whole. Similarly, Avery (2003) presents a comprehensive overview of Victorian and Edwardian architecture in Britain which includes dedicated passages relating to school houses designed and constructed during this period. Both publications treat the physical and architectural environments in their historical contexts, offering a late-20th century perspective on the impact of Victorian and Edwardian reform on architecture. However, neither publication is concerned with the modern-day significance of these buildings to the modern-day populations which engages with them on a daily basis. To be fair to both publications, such a consideration is well beyond their assigned academic remit.
Gurtovehy National School, Gortaveha townland near Lough Greaney in Co. Clare This school house was built in 1920 to replace an earlier school house that was located nearby
What is important to consider is that these and other studies have been primarily concerned with ‘Architectural Interest’ from all almost exclusively historical architectural perspective. They fail to draw upon or recognise the identical social significance of many similar buildings that have served the same institutional function, but were perhaps of a lesser intrinsic architectural value for a variety of reasons (date, originality of design etc.). Hence, these buildings have been overlooked. In defining a building to be of ‘Architectural Interest’, Historic England have condensed the general principles applied by the Secretary of State under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 (DCMS 2010) to this simple statement:
‘To be of special architectural interest a building must be of importance in its architectural design, decoration or craftsmanship; special interest may also apply to nationally important examples of particular building types and techniques (e.g. buildings displaying technological innovation or virtuosity) and significant plan forms.’ – Historic England 2017 Continue reading The School House in Ireland: Architecture and Meaning – Part 2→
The School House in Ireland: Architecture and Meaning
Henry Glassie is a professor of folklore at Indiana University in the United States. He has published extensively on the topic of material culture, and in the 2000 he published a book that was simply titled Vernacular Architecture. Glassie’s publication drew on his three decades of observations of vernacular architecture from around the world, and showed that common buildings, and the meanings and associations attached to them, contributed to a more democratic telling of history. Glassie viewed buildings like poems and rituals, in that they realise culture and reflect in a material way, the thoughts, beliefs and experiences of the people that design, build and use them. Of course, this is true about all architecture, not just the vernacular traditions. But what do we mean when we talk about vernacular architecture, and are school houses vernacular structures, or imposing institutional buildings?
Vernacular architecture exists everywhere there are human populations around the world. It can’t be defined as a particular architectural style that you might recognise like Baroque or Neo-Classical, but rather a building paradigm where the arrangement of the structure is the simplest form of addressing human needs. It is a pure reaction to an individual person’s or society’s building needs, and has allowed everyday people, even before the architect, to construct shelter according to their circumstance. Some are the exotic products of indigenous people in places unknown to us. But others are familiar, maybe too familiar, and so are overlooked and unappreciated. This is the case with many of the school houses featured here.
Hollygrove National School, Hollygrove townland, Co. Galway (dated 1899). This plain two-room school house is a fine example of one of the most simplistic ‘factory school’ designs supplied by the OPW at the turn of the 20th century. Despite their pivotal role in education in rural Ireland at the time, many of these buildings are not recorded in the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
Vernacular buildings are composed of local materials. The meanings that lie in the selection of materials are social and economic as well as environmental, and the buildings very much reflect the local area and its people. They can tell us a lot about the people that constructed them. As Glassie states; ‘culture gathers into an inner resource of association and gathers order aesthetically, by which he means that the landscape and how people view and experience the world is reflected in what they build and create. With the act of physical alteration that calls time into space implying a past and a future, and with the walls that divide space, at once including and excluding, architecture has happened’ (ibid.). Architecture gives physical form to names and claims, to memories and hopes. As a conceptual activity, architecture is a matter of forming ideas into plans, plans into things that other people can see. Architecture shapes relations between people. It is a kind of a communication (ibid.). Continue reading The School House in Ireland: Architecture and Meaning – Part 1→
The autumnal evening sun hangs low in the sky, and the few clouds that have lingered as twilight beckons are tainted red and orange around their fringes by the setting sun. From the forested hills of the Slieve Aughty Mountains in south Co. Galway, I can see across into Co. Clare, with the stoney plateau of the Burren silhouetted blue by the bright, dropping sunlight. I’ve spent the day touring around South Galway indulging in a recent pastime of mine; looking for what I consider to be a derelict beauty. Beside where I’m standing on the low hillside, and hidden in the dense forestry plantation of the Slieve Aughtys, is the now-disused, one-roomed Reyrawer National School; dilapidated and empty, haunting and isolated. I’m here to photograph the school, and to get a sense of the local environment, both in its present state and in the past.
Looking out of the classroom window of Reyrawer National School in the Slieve Aughty Mountains
The landscape around here has changed significantly over the past 50 years. The now forested hill-sides are dotted with the ruins of former farmsteads. The former pasture and rough grazing lands have been sown with coniferous plantations, and the ubiquitous and imposing wind-turbines highlight the movement away from agrarian living in this area, as an alternative and profitable use is sought for this now people-less landscape. In the Aughtys, the result is an empty space, a desolate place where few people live. An unintended but welcome consequence of this depopulation is the creation of a welcome retreat from the ribbon development popular across much of the Irish landscape – though the man-made forests bear a hunting watermark of former settlement, with field boundaries, bóithríns, houses, farms, and infrastructure such as disused schools, hidden throughout the forests. When Reyrawer National School was in use, this was a lived-in landscape which supported a scattered, largely agrarian population. With the movement away from this lifestyle, the landscape was emptied and the school was no longer needed. The plaque on the eastern gable of the building dates the construction of the school to 1891. It closed in the late 1950s.
The landscape of the Great Blasket Island with the old national school barely recognisable in the centre
From travelling the countryside to photograph these old schools, I can tell you that there is a greater proliferation of abandoned schools in more rural and depopulated areas, with a near absence of them in urban centres. To begin explaining this let’s start with the establishment of the National Schools Act in 1831. Shortly after the establishment of the National Schools Act, Ireland’s population began to decline dramatically, initially triggered by the Great Famine of the 1840s. Between 1840 and 1960, the population of the 26 counties of what would become the Republic of Ireland fell from 6.5 million to 2.8 million. However, this decline was driven by mass emigration, and birth rates in Ireland during this time were amongst the highest in Europe. Because of this fact, despite a dramatically falling population, the need to educate significant numbers of children of school-going age remained. New school buildings continued to be required and used. There were particular spikes in new-builds after the National Schools Act in 1831, and again 1926 with the School Attendance Act which meant parents were legally obliged to send their children to school for the years between their 6th and 14th birthdays.Continue reading School Days Over: Spaces, Places and Memory→
Bunglash (Bun Glaise) National School, Bunglash South townland, Co. Kerry
(dated: c.1873)
NGR: 69192, 87189
On 12 September 1893 the Great Southern and Western Railway opened a branch line off the existing Tralee–Mallow line, connecting the village of Farranfore with Valentia Harbour on the southern shore of Dingle Bay. At that time it was the most westerly railway line in Europe and passed through some of Ireland’s most spectacular scenery as it climbed through Kerry’s mountainous countryside. It served as the main transport system for the Iveragh Peninsula for 75 years, with the last train departing Killorglin on 30 January 1960.
So, for 67-odd years, a steam-powered locomotive chugged daily along the Farranfore–Valentia Harbour line, passing just north of the glacial lake Lough Carragh, and stopping at Glenbeigh Station. This station was at the foot of Seefin Mountain, and the surrounding landscape at the turn of the twentieth century was beautiful, wild and remote. There were few distractions intruding from the outside world, and the coming and going of the steam train punctuated the day. In the surrounding hills and mountains, schools did not have clocks, and the whistle of train in the quiet landscape as it passed over Curraheen level crossing at 10.15 a.m. let the local schoolchildren know that it was am sos (‘break time’).
Gleann Cotáin (Glencuttane) National School, Glancuttaun Upper townland, Co. Kerry
(dated: 1887)
NGR: 77839, 089223
The townland of Glancuttaun Upper is situated in the parish of Kilorglin on the northeastern side of the Iveragh peninsula in Co.Kerry. The landscape here comprises areas of low-lying farmland shadowed by low mountainous terrain with it’s rough grazing lands. A quick look at the First Edition 25 inch Ordnance Survey sheet shows field patterns that demonstrate how the lands and landscape here were exploited in the past; by the roadside and in the low-lying, more fertile areas we find tightly packed, small enclosed fields close to the clachan style settlements that are so characteristic of the rural Irish landscape. The mountain sides remain unenclosed.
Glencuttane National School, Co. Kerry -First Edition 25 inch Ordnance Survey sheet
These field patterns reflect a system of farming and animal husbandry in Ireland that stretches back millenia. Traditionally, cattle farming was the mainstay of Gaelic life in Ireland, and stock was effectively currency. Early law tracts dedicate significant detail to the care of cattle, and rights and obligations of cattle owners. During winter, stock was commonly kept enclosed about the homestead, while in the summer months, cattle were driven to rough summer grazing in the uplands. This ancient settlement pattern is still visible today in the modern landscape around Glancuttaun.
It is on the low-lying and more populated lands of Glancuttaun Upper that Glencuttane National School was constructed in the late 19th century. Dating to 1887, it is merely a ruinous, roofless frame of a building today. The thinly spread soil around the school is often water-logged, and on an overcast day that I visited, it seemed a particularly dour place. Having said this, I passed here again on a brighter afternoon, and the fair weather helped to lighten the sad look of the old grey building.
Glencuttane National School, Co. Kerry 1887
The building itself comprises a detached five-bay, single-storey national school, built c.1887. To the front there is a single-bay single-storey gabled projecting entrance bay to the centre. The school is enclosed by a rubble boundary wall with stone-on-edge coping, and includes wrought-iron gates that are entangled with the overgrown grass.
Glencuttane National School, Co. Kerry 1887
The original slate roof of the school has been removed exposing the interior of the building to elements. The glazing is gone, and the weather beaten exterior looks a sorry sight by the roadside. Inside there are two classrooms with fireplaces located centrally in the building. The suspended floor has collapsed, and I had to negotiate the rubble, being careful not to impale myself on the debris.
Glencuttane National School, Co. Kerry 1887
Some cute details remain in the building such as the wrought-iron coat hooks in the entrance hall, but the building is largely a ruin that is difficult to negotiate. Nonetheless, the building once served an important social role in the local community.
Glencuttane National School, Co. Kerry 1887
However, Glencuttane school house is absent from the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage, despite it’s social and architectural value. This is a phenomenon that I have highlighted before, where identical school houses in different counties may or may not be included in the National Inventory, with no clear reasoning behind their absence or inclusion. Although the NIAH is a national inventory, it is not homogeneous from county to county. Is this something that can be addressed?
Cluain Chumhra National School, Cluain Chorta townland, Co. Kerry
(dated: c.1910 – 1920)
NGR: 050749, 100942
The Dingle Peninsula (or Corca Dhuibhne) in Co. Kerry stretches some 30 miles (48 km) into the Atlantic Ocean from Ireland’s south-west coast, and is a popular spot for holiday makers. The peninsula is dominated by mist-covered mountain ranges that form its spine, running from the Slieve Mish range to Mount Brandon, Ireland’s second highest peak. The coastline consists of steep sea-cliffs, broken by sandy beaches, with two large sand spits at Inch in the south and the Maharees to the north. Off the west coast lie the Blasket Islands; inhabited until 1953 when the last remaining islanders were forcefully evacuated to the mainland on 17 November by the Irish government. It is an area of outstanding natural beauty, and despite a busy tourist season, it is a peaceful place that retains it’s rural feel.
The principal town on the peninsula is Dingle; a major fishing port in Ireland, with the industry dating back to about 1830. The fishing industry brought the railways to the town, and Dingle was formerly the western terminus of the narrow gauge Tralee and Dingle Light Railway. The railway station opened on 1 April 1891, closed for passenger traffic on 17 April 1939 and for regular goods traffic on 10 March 1947, finally closing altogether on 1 July 1953, by which time a cattle train once per month was the sole operation. The railway line weaved along the south coast of the peninsula on it’s way from Tralee, crossing a flat, low-lying area between Lispole and An Cnoicin known as Droichead An Imligh (Emlaghmore Bridge). It is adjacent to the former railway line and the modern N-86 road in the townland of Clooncurra ,that you’ll find an early 20th century school house no longer in use.
Gortnabinny National School, Gortnabinny townland, Co. Kerry
(dated: 1880-1898)
NGR: 091541, 063374
It’s a Sunday evening in late July in south Co. Kerry. The summer air is warm but heavy, and the sky is overcast though there are occasional bursts of sunlight through gaps in the temperamental cloud cover. This kind of weather is disappointingly common in Ireland at this time of year, with sporadic heavy showers of rain in between the dry spells. I’ve arrived at Gortnabinny townland, located about 10 km south of the town of Kenmare; a rural spot at the gateway to the Beara Peninsula.
The surrounding landscape is hilly; the ferns are a lush green colour, and in the damp, heavy warmth of the evening, the dense greenery and woodlands seem tropical. Earlier this day I had met Simon Linnell in Kenmare. He’s involved with a local cultural and historical research group in the town, and each year they publish the ‘Kenmare Chronicle’, a journal dedicated to documenting various aspects of the local heritage. He tells me that this year the group have been researching the many disused school houses located in the area, and has given me a hand-drawn map which shows the locations of the schools he’s identified. Gortnabinny is my last stop on Simon’s map.
Leaving the humid roadside which is arched by a canopy of the most vibrant green deciduous trees, I make my way up a low knoll and through the wet woodlands; toward the crest of the hill I can see the remnants of single-storey building hidden behind pine palms, dripping after the most recent sun shower.
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