Following on from the meeting with the Principal of Togher Boys N.S. , Billy O'Brien and Eamonn Pearse arrived at the School on a dark Winter's night on Friday October 4th at 7 pm. The school was hosting the Returning Officers for the Seanad Referendum and prior permission had been granted to use the Canteen to scan any available archives. The team was met by the ever helpful Pat - Schools Caretaker. One of the first things to catch their eye was a framed photograph of the Old Cottage School taken before demolition. It was definitely a euphoric moment as this was the last captured image ever taken of the building. This excited them no end and set the mood for the rest of the night.
Photograph taken circa 1992 of Old Cottage
School prior to demolition
The team quickly busied ourselves setting up the scanning equipment and began the arduous task of trawling through the old School Registers. Of course , they felt a natural bias towards their own particular entries and a sense of elation was felt when they eventually discovered them! Legalities prevent the Blog from showing most of the entries except for their own. This is a project to which they will certainly return in the future , if only to completely digitize what is available for easier study in the coming years. A lot of the Registers are very old and crumbling in places. Care was taken whilst handling them so as to guard against any possible damage.
School Register which goes up to 1891.
This is from the Old Cottage School!
Aside from old Roll Books and Registers they unearthed some retro film and slides which would have been used as educational aids back in the early to mid 1970s. These were pure gold opening up a World few have seen for nearly 40 years! While much work still needs to be done in order to preserve them in digital format , the following gives some account of these little nuggets of wisdom from the past.
Original Education Board Film Reels from the 1970s
Irish Language lesson film 3rd Class 1976
Reeling in the years with this slide!
They spent a few hours altogether roaming the corridors of time , scanning and photographing much material which the blog will showcase at a later date. Suffice it to say , many thanks to Jack Durkin and Pat for their help and enthusiasm in pandering to the groups needs and providing them with the facilities to study their Archives. They are forever in their debt. This is just the beginning!
No comments:
Post a Comment