A new Holy Faith School at Glasnevin: a seventy-fifth year celebrationExactly seventy-five years ago, on Saturday, 8 December 1939, a ceremony was held to mark the laying and blessing of the Corner Stone (or Foundation Stone) of a new Holy Faith school of Our Lady Immaculate at Glasnevin. The Stone took its symbolic place in the rapidly rising red-bricked walls of the new building, which, when completed by 1941, realised the Holy Faith congregation’s vision for providing for the educational needs of a growing population. As part of the ritual, held appropriately on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, a ceremonial trowel, inscribed with the date, was presented to the chief celebrant, Right Rev. Monsignor P.J. Walsh, who in turn donated it to the community of the Holy Faith convent at Glasnevin. There was also prepared a commemorative parchment that recorded the ceremony, and listed for the historical record the leading dignitaries of church and state at the time.
Whether or not some of those mentioned were present on 8 December 1939, the formal registering of the principal religious and secular leaders of Ireland nevertheless reflects the close-knittedness of the ecclesiastical and political sectors in the early decades of the newly independent state. In particular, the document captures the spirit of close co-operation between church and state in the educational sphere. This provides a context for the prominent place in the roll-call of spiritual luminaries (which is headed by Pope Pius XII and Archbishop Edward Byrne of Dublin) of the Mother-General of the Sisters of the Holy Faith, Sister M. Elizabeth Kelly, and of five other sisters who were described as ‘consultresses’.
Patrick J. Munden, under whose ‘supervision’ the building was ‘designed and erected’, represents an important connection between the religious sphere and that of government and administration. As a young architect, Munden had become closely involved with projects undertaken by the Holy Faith congregation, going on to design the panelling in the community chapel at Glasnevin, as well buildings at Clarendon Street, Haddington Road, Clontarf and Killester. Munden’s political affiliation was forged by his participation in the Irish Volunteers at the Howth gun-running in 1914 and his arrest after Easter Week, 1916. He later stood as a parliamentary candidate, was a founder-member of Clann na Poblachta and served as chairperson of the Dublin Port and Docks Board.
Also resonant of the events of the foundation of the state, as well as the essentially female dimension to the project for a new school, was the citation in the parchment of the Right Honorable Lord Mayor of Dublin, Mrs Kathleen Clarke, widow of the signatory of the 1916 proclamation, Thomas Clarke. If she were present at the event on 8 December 1939, it is very possible that she would have joined by another close relative of an executed leader of the Easter Rising, Margaret Pearse, sister of P.H. Pearse and his brother, Willie. She and her sister, Mary, had been educated at Holy Faith school, Glasnevin, and Margaret was in 1939 a senator and President of the Holy Faith Past Pupils’ Union.Built at a time of uncertainty at the outbreak of World War II (as reflected, for example, in the provision of compartments for air-raid shelters on the ground floor), St Mary’s Secondary School became one of the architectural highlights of the Glasnevin district, not only because of its attractive design, but also because of its magnificent situation, overlooking to the south the verdant grounds and the Tolka Valley in the foreground, and the whole cityscape of Dublin stretching to the mountains as a backdrop. The school has thrived academically through several generations of students, incorporating boarders down to 1982. Various new facilities and amenities have been added over the years, and in the last decade the building has been completely refurbished.
