Schools in Clane.

Extract from the "Know Your Clane" series.

Brennan's "Schools of Kildare and Leighlin, 1775 - 1835" is a report of a survey conducted in 1823, and it lists 13(!) schools in the parish of Clane that year. An entry in the report deals with a school operated by the Patrician Orphan Society, later to become the Convent Girls School. The teacher was one, James Byrne.

Clane, free school.

Opened 1818 and held throughout the year, Saturdays and holydays excepted.
James Byrne: Roman Catholic, appointed by the Patrician society in 1823. Thirty five years; teaches Reading, Writing, Arithmetic and Surveying; educated at Carlow; taught the Lancastrian system at Clane. Income Ł30 per annum, paid by the Patrician Orphan Society and aided by subscription.
House, a good building with eight large windows and two fire places; interior on the plan of Kildare Street School; built with lime and stone, slated; would cost at present about Ł400; fifty feet by twenty two; built from subscription from the members of the Patrician Society and about Ł130 from a charity play in the Theatre Royal, Dublin; the residue from charity sermons at the Roman Catholic Chapel, Clane.
In connection with the Orphan Society founded about the year 1750 in Dublin, some Roman Catholics subscribed the annual sum of six shillings and six pence for the purpose of protecting orphans and foundlings to the extent of the funds they might raise. The numbers, I am informed amount to 100, many of whom were from infancy nursed, clothed and educated until apprenticed. Not in connection with any religious order.
Visited by the Parish Priest and Curate; occasionally by Patrick Behan, merchant of the City of Dublin and President of the Patrician Society. Superintended by the Parish Priest and the Curate and by the Governors of the Patrician Orphan Society since its commencement at Clane. Average attendance: a. summer 1824: males 40; Roman Catholics 40. b. winter, 40; c. summer 1823, 45. Eight in twenty read; eight months to read; Books: History of the Old and New testament; Manning's English Reader; General Catechism; Primers; Spelling Books; Gough's, Voster's, jackson's Book Keeping; Hawney's Mensuration with Spelling and Reading Tables."

Girl's Old Primary School

The Girl's Old Primary School at Main Street, Clane might well be one of the oldest in the country. It was built in 1818 from the proceeds of a charity play held in the old Theatre Royal. This was twenty one years before the arrival of the nuns in Clane and twenty years before National Education. Originally it had only one large room, built on the plan of the Kildare Street School, both are now gone forever. The Kildare Place Society was a Protestant educational society which pioneered national primary education in Ireland. Their teacher training course was a six week course and the trained teacher was expected to teach 100 pupils, of all ages, in one large room, with the assistance of a monitor (a competent senior pupil aspiring to do the formal training course). That such a system worked, and worked well, is a tribute to how well motivated and how socialised their pupils were, more than to the training their teachers received.

The pupils in the Clane School were fifty orphan boys in the charge of the Patrician Orphan Society. It was extended in 1906 when the "Infants Room" was built at the southern end. A previous addition had been made to the rere in 1860 which connected the school and the Convent. The original room, which, incidentally, is fifty feet by twenty two, as described, with eight external windows and two fire places, was divided by folding doors in 1929, at which time the porch was added. Railings replaced a high wall in 1950 and the building was re-roofed. The previous ceiling was a fine example in stucco work, built by a Jesuit Brother for the nuns on their arrival in 1839.

Reproduced from "Le Chéile" by kind permission.

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