Glountane(Glantane) N S

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This school was opened in 1847 during the worst year of the great famine. It comprised two large rooms and was 68x18 feet with dry outside toilets and no running water. A timber partition separated the rooms and there was a fireplace at each gable. The school was built to accommodate 200 pupils but only 56 started there when it opened, due mainly to the famine. By the 1940's the school was no longer fit for purpose, the timber floors were rotting and the school was rat-infested so the local community sought a new school. They thought they were in a good position as Sean Moylan was Minister for Education and a number of locals fought beside him during the War of Independence. A deputation was told that there was not a hope as the country was broke and the only way was if the old school burned down. Sunday night Dec.14th 1952 was a cold miserable night with a good fall of snow. The school went up in flames and it was no loss other than the roll book. School resumed in Lombardstown dance hall on 7 Jan.1953 and the new and present school in Glantane was opened by Minister Sean Moylan on 3 Sept.1953

Donie O Sullivan 29.8.2021

Type of Building:

Educational

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Comments

Thanks Donie! Hard to believe it was designed for 200 students...

How did you get your information?

Laura

IrelandXO Volunteer LC

Monday 30th August 2021 12:31PM

Laura

i attended that school from 1947 to 1956 and did a project on its history for the 50th anniversary of the opening of the new school in 1953,I visited the national archives ,contacted the Dept.of Education and researched the police files on their investigation of the incident..I also talked to two witnesses who saw the fire on their way home from a dance in Mallow in a hackney car and went to the site but it was beyond saving..The local curate announced off the altar that he or anybody connected with the campaign for a new school had anything to do with it. A fire from the previus Friday was most unlikely.however, two possibilities were that someone with a grudge dit it or more likely some vagabond took shelter there on that freezing ,snowy night and accidentally caused the fire.The Garda investigation yielded nothing.

I well remember trudging the 2 miles that morning in about 7 cms of snow to school and a farmer taking his milk to the local creamery told us to go home as the school was burned down but disblief turned to joy when we met others having turned back and we had an extra weeks holiday to put icing on the cake

I should point out that the school grounds were regularly used by the local branch of the Land League and by the Lombardstown Company of the Irish Volunteers when formed in 1917 for training purposes...

Donie