Just under two hundred years ago Hedge Schools were numerous in most parts of Ireland. The part title ‘Hedge’ is more a description of the desolate condition of most of these schools rather than the actual location of the schools although in some instances a rough structure was erected against the sheltered side of a dry ditch. In educational terms location is of little consequence, but in today’s world of higher and ever higher education we must credit system with having played a part in shaping the development of our current education curriculum.
Curraghaleen Hedge School was the only known school in the Drum area where a portion of the original building that remained was identified as such by local people of the present generation. This small section of one of the gable walls of Curraghaleen School was the only surviving remnant, of any of the Drum Hedge Schools, which had remained in situ. It is presently incorporated into a wall of the much-acclaimed restoration of the school that was undertaken by the Drum Heritage Group and commenced by them in 2005. This former school was fully restored by 2006, by the members giving of their time voluntarily, on the site where it was originally situated. Its dimensions and furnishings taken from and as described in the records in the 1826 Survey of Schools and as confirmed by local residents from accounts heard by them from their parents and grandparents. Furnishings and fittings within the restored Curraghaleen School consisted of a post-and-wattle chimney, student slates, old photographs and other historical townland memorabilia as well as effigies representing the schoolmaster and the 16 pupils dressed in garments relevant to the period.
In a survey conducted by the Commissioners for Education and reported in the 1826 Survey of Schools in Ireland, the building at Curraghaleen was described as a ‘wretched cabin or outhouse’ and was attended by 12 male and 4 female children, all Roman Catholics. The schoolmaster was a Patrick Hawkins, who one has reason to believe, hailed from Creagh, Bealnamulla. He earned a salary (paid for by the children’s parents) of £4-£10 per annum.
The subjects taught in the school were: Reading, Writing, Arithmetic (and known as the 3Rs) and Roman Catholic Catechism. The school appears on the 1837 Ordnance Survey Maps and although it was in operation in 1855, no valuation charges appear on the Sir Richard Griffith’s Valuation of Tenements Lists. When the formal application was made to the Commissioners for Education for assistance towards setting up the Drumpark School inn 1961, the Curraghaleen School was stated to have been the nearest school operating in the area. Fragments of the 1821 Census of Ireland, which survived the Four Courts Fire in 1922, show Curraghaleen townland to have contained 30 homesteads supporting a population of 150 people. The Tithe Composition Lists of 1833 show 35 occupied homesteads in this same townland.
Information panels placed inside the hedge school record an unusual method of making poteen in an isolated farm house by a John Tyrrell (1865-1944). From his work experience in St. James’s Gate Brewery, Dublin, he developed this unique enterprise at home on his return to live at Curraghaleen.
You can get the key to the building at the house up the laneway on the right.
You are looking for a magnetic nano.
Be sure to visit the Drum heritage centre.