Schooling in the First Millennium

The parish of Collinstown and Fore was once a place of great learning. Loch Lein, the Irish for Lough Lene translated into the Lake of Learning. The monks who were connected to the monastery of Fore ran a great school on Smythe’s Island before the Vikings plundered it in the 9th century. The island was also believed to have been a place of retirement for the learned men of the time.

Fore was once a great university town, Baile Fhobhair, the Irish name for Fore means the town of books. The monastery founded by St Féichín was a great place of learning and teaching for many centuries.

Hedge schools

Hedge schools were the method of schooling in the parish from the late 17th century.

Collinstown

There are records of three hedge schools in Collinstown:

1. A hedge school run by Patrick Tighe.

2. Thomas Ward held a school in a house of stone and clay. There were thirty-two Catholics and seven Protestant pupils.

3. A day school that taught “classical instruction” to six pupils. These pupils paid between 5/- and £1 each quarter.

Kilpatrick

John Donoughe founded the hedge school in Kilpatrick in 1833. Subjects taught were reading, writing, English grammar, arithmetic, bookkeeping, geometry, geography and Catechism. Barney Kelly taught in this school from 1838. there were thirty pupils in the school and subjects taught were reading, writing, arithmetic and poetry.

Cummerstown

Master Bartholomew Sheridan ran a school in a thatched house. There were sixty-five pupils in this school, nine of these pupils were Protestant.

Glenidan

There are records of three hedge schools in Glenidan:

1. A school run by the Friar sisters.

2. A school of sixty-four pupils held in a thatched cabin run by Rev. P. Cooke. Colonel Monk made a yearly grant of £3 8s 3d to this school.

3. Patrick Cooke kept a day school for which he was paid £3 from the representatives of the late Colonel Monk. Subjects taught were reading writing, English grammar, arithmetic, geography and Catechism.

Drumcree

There were two hedge schools in Drumcree:

1. Master Abbot held a school in the house of the farmer whom he lodges with. The school was divided into five classes and the pupils paid 3p a week for their education. The children wrote with a pencil on a slate. Subjects taught were reading, grammar, writing, spelling, arithmetic and geography. The master and the pupils spoke only in English; Irish was the language of the ordinary people at the time.

2. A hedge school was founded in Drumcree around 1810. There were ten pupils in this school at that time. There were many schoolmasters over the years in this school. In the 1830’s the pupils wrote on slate with pieces of stone and were taught reading, writing, spelling and arithmetic.

Fore

Very little is known about this school. The school was held in the Master’s house.

Corbally

Very little is known about this school. The school was grant-aided annually by Colonel Monk and was held in a stone and mortar building with a thatched roof.

Schools of the Protestant Faith in the Parish

There were Protestant schools in both Drumcree and Collinstown but the majority of Protestant children were educated in the hedge schools of the area.

In Collinstown there was a bible school supported by the local landlord William Barlow Smythe. Rev. Christopher Keane bought the Protestant school for £415 from the landlord’s wife in 1931. However there is another story told in the parish that the landlord’s wife gave the Catholic priest the building for exorcising the ghost at the landlord’s house in Barbavilla. This building then became the National School in Collinstown in 1933.

National Schools in the Parish of Fore and Collinstown

In 1831 the National School system was formed. The schools of Fore, Collinstown, Cummerstown and Glenidan applied to the Commissioners of Education to join this system.

Collinstown National School

In March 1854 an application was made by the male and female schools of Collinstown to join the National School system. The school opened on the 9th May 1854, two months after applying to the National School system. The building was a new building, funds were raised by the parishioners to build the new school.

The school was beside the church. The schoolhouse was a new building of stone, and it had a lime and slate roof. The walls were plastered and a wooden floor was laid. The building was a little over fourteen metres in length by five metres wide and was three metres in height. The teachers were husband and wife, Garrett and Elisa Conway, who had taught in Kilbride National School in Co. Meath. Average daily attendance was ninety to a hundred pupils. School hours were from nine in the morning to three in the afternoon. The school followed the curriculum of the Board of National Schools.

The hedge school in Kilpatrick merged with Collinstown male and female schools when the new school was opened. In 1933 the male and female school building was demolished and the schools became one mixed school in the building of the Protestant Bible School. When Cummerstown and Glenidan National Schools closed they amalgamated with Collinstown National School.

The new school building was built in 1980 at a cost of £193,500. the old school building was sold into private hands and again sold in 1999 for the price of over £250,000. the present school was renovated in 1996. Collinstown National School has a teaching staff of four teachers and there are ninety-seven pupils on the roll in the Millennium year.

Cummerstown National School

In August 1851 Cummerstown National School applied to the Board of National Schools to join the National School Scheme. The application was granted. School hours were from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. five days a week. The school was a non-religious school and was open to all religions. Religious instruction took place on Saturday afternoons after 3 p.m. so as not to interfere with the daily running of the school. The school used the textbooks of the Board of National Schools and general lessons were taught. Daily, monthly and quarterly records of attendance were kept for the Board. The Board’s inspectors were free to visit the school whenever they wished. The school was one and a half miles from Collinstown and it is now closed.

Glenidan National School

Glenidan National School, which was built in 1887, was amalgamated with Collinstown National School in 1975 when it closed. The school would have had similar subjects and school times and rules as the other National Schools in the area.

Fore National School

The National School in Fore had similar school times and lessons taught as the school in Cummerstown. Pupils attended whichever school was nearest to them.

Schooling in the Past in the Parish of Collinstown and Fore

Schools nowadays are not at all like schools in the past. Children are no longer hit with canes in schools. Most children like school and are happy in school. Most of our parents and grandparents were not happy in school.

Schools are now centrally heated; years ago schools were heated by open turf firs, and the children usually brought in the turf to light the fire. Schools now have paid cleaners to clean the school; hears ago the pupils had to clean the school themselves. School transport is available to those who live outside a three-mile radius from the school, before school buses were introduced pupils often had to walk miles to get to school.

All National Schools teach the same subjects and follow the same curriculum, years ago different National Schools taught different subjects. Computers are now in every classroom in our school and some of these computers are connected to the Internet. We can reach anywhere in the world that is connected to a computer in a few seconds.

Our parents and grandparents had to learn everything off by heart. Now we learn in much more interesting ways and understand subjects better.

Interview with Noel Fitzpatrick, Cummerstown who attended Glenidan National School

I started school in 1959 at Glenidan N.S. I walked there and back every day. A round journey of three miles approximately. Glenidan N.S. had two rooms with one teacher in each room. Mrs. Fay who was from Collinstown taught infants and first and second class. Her room was known as the little room. I remember her being a very nice person. From there I went to the big room. Mrs. Molloy was the teacher here. She taught third, fourth, fifth and sixth classes. She was very strict, but a very good teacher.

Lunch breaks were spent playing hurling on the road. There were no field facilities at the school. Two teams were picked and battle commenced. A sponge or wind ball was used at that time. The only time that we would see a proper hurling ball would be when we would play Collinstown N.S. in Briody’s field beside Lavins Crossroads. Sometimes good hurlers emerged from these two schools, probably the finest being Michael Cosgrove who at this time manages the Lough Lene Gaels and the Westmeath senior hurling teams.

Toilets at Glenidan N.S. were outdoors. They were located at the rear of the building. Heating was supplied by the ESB – storage heaters, which were very poor in the winter. Fifth and sixth classes would by asked to bring in some turf or sticks. An open grate was used to light a fire and classes went in rotation to it.

Interview with Past Pupil, Glenidan

It is about thirty years ago since I started school. I was four years old. I don’t actually remember my first day. The school was about one mile away. It was a two-teacher school. It was an old school with two rooms. It had toilets outside (if you could call them toilets). It was a hole in the ground with timber across. I remember we made our own games. We didn’t have a ball or courts, or anything to encourage us to play. We played hide and seek at the back of the school and we played tip-tag. There was no heating, only an open fire. We wrote with ink pens and had inkwells that we got filled from a big ink bottle. We walked to school most days. On wet days my father brought us in his Austin A40. There was only one infant’s class. We moved from infants to first class.

When I was in second class we moved to another school. The bus passed our door. This school was “modern”, as we would call it. It had all the luxuries of a modern day school. We had tennis courts, gym and, not forgetting, toilet facilities. I spend the rest of my junior years there with happy memories. Our master was a very nice man. His form of punishment for the girls was kneeling down.

I then went to secondary school with a variety of subjects, classrooms and teachers. Games were varied with lots for everyone, even me who was not the sporty type. I left school at seventeen years of age and always remember my school days as happy ones.