My Old School Kilmacdonagh, ballymacoda, county cork, ireland

Kilmacdonagh National School in Ballypherode, Ballymacoda, County Cork was where I first went to school in the mid-1950s.

It has long since ceased to be a seat of learning and is now used by a local farmer as storage space. But there was a time, back in the Late Middle Ages (or so it seems to me now), when "the whining school-boy, with his satchel / And shining morning face, creeping like a snail / Unwillingly to school " went through its doors.

I was here up to an including First Class (7 to 8 years of age). For the first couple of years my mother brought me the two miles to school on the back of her bicycle - there were very few cars at that time and I don't know of anyone who was driven there: you walked or cycled - and I cycled myself when I went into First Class. There were no school buses.

The teacher was an elderly woman called the Col Aherne and my memory of her is of an unsmiling, severe looking lady in a long black dress. I can recall very little of my time there other than sitting at the desk with its inkwell into which one dipped a wooden pen with a steel nib at the end. There was no central heating - warmth came from a coal fire at the head of the classroom. All the pupils up to an including First Class were in the room under the control of Mrs Aherne; Second Class onwards were in the other room and were taught by Ned O'Brien, the Headmaster.

It ceased to be a school in the mid-1970s when the new school in Kilcredan opened. It has since fallen into disrepair and is used as storage space by a local farmer. It was interesting to get access to it and photograph it in its present state.

Created By
John Finn
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