The Old School in Clontuskert

By Frank Parker

During the era of the Penal Laws in Ireland the education of the Roman Catholic population was either non-existent or very haphazard, being carried on mostly in hedgeschools in out-of-the-way places and by persons with little learning themselves. There were a number of hedgeschools in Clontuskert. The best known was in Crossconnell where Mr. Dermody taught only the very elementary subjects, reading, writing and simple arithmetic. (The writer knew Mrs. James Curley, Carrowmore who attended Mr. Dermody's hedgeschool. She was Eugene Curley's mother and lived to be aged 104 years).

The Education Act passed by the British Government following Catholic Emancipation in 1829, enabled Irish Catholics to be given the same education as their Protestant neighbours in state-established schools.

So, in 1835, the building in Chapel Park, which was once a thatched Chapel prior to the erection in 1820 of the present Saint Augustine's Church was taken over by the Board of Education and the Clontuskert Boys' and Girls' National Schools were established.

The boys of Clontuskert School c.1910

Only the meagre information is available about the early history of the schools, but it is known that it was not easy to persuade parents to send their children to the new British-established schools. However, bit-by-bit the hedgeschools faded away and so, education for the masses took root. In those days too, Irish was widely spoken in Clontuskert, but English soon became the principal language.

In the early nineteenth century, before the Famine of 1846'-47', very few of the older boys and girls attended school during Spring, Summer and Autumn as the were required to work on the farms and many of them were employed by the local landlords as labourers and maid servants. At that time the farms were owned by the landlords who demanded exorbitant rents which could be paid when due. If the farmer could not pay he was liable to be evicted. Thus, all the help available was used to sow and harvest the crops to ensure that the rent could be met.

The Old Protestant School House

In the Winter Season, schools were packed with those who wanted to make up for lost time. Attendance at school was not compulsory and there was no-upper age limit for the pupils. Young men, already shaving, were common-place in the classroom and many of them smoked pipes (cigarettes were unknown). The girls too were often of marriageable age while still attending Clontuskert Girls' National School.

The boys' school was the venue for the Land League meetings in the 1880s and later the first meeting of the Clontuskert Company of the Irish Volunteers was held there in 1913. Indeed it was in the boys' school that the same volunteers paraded to be issued with bandoliers and haversacks and other equipment which they subscribed for and purchased from the British War Office as obsolete war stores. Those volunteers were trained in simple foot-drills, arms drills and route marching by their former teacher Mr. P.J. Parker whose father Michael Parker was an early principal of the boys' school and a prominent member of the Irish League. He was a founder member of the Clontuskert Land League Band in 1880. He taught in Clontuskert School from 1859 until his sudden death in 1895. Michael Parker's wife Maria, was a principal of the girls' school from 1866 to 1890. Their son Patrick J. Parker was principal of the boys' school from 1895 until he retired in 1936.

Clontuskert National School today

P.J. Parker's son Frank was a student teacher in Clontuskert School for three years from 31st March, 1920.

The boys' school and the girls' school were amalgamated on 31st March, 1920 and for the first time Clontuskert experienced co-education. A new school was built in 1956 and so, the old Clontuskert National School which had seen the disappearance of the hedgeschools and the beginning of education for Roman Catholics in Ireland was closed down. And in 1999 a new extension was opened on to the school opened 43 years before.

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