Nuns who helped to shape face of Galway

Lifestyle – Judy Murphy meets members of the Presentation Order which is celebrating 200 years in Galway

Rambling through Galway’s bustling Latin Quarter these days, with its high-end bars and restaurants, where happy tourists rub shoulders with relaxed locals, it’s difficult to imagine the poverty that existed in this area 200 years ago when the Presentation order of nuns established their first Galway convent in Kirwan’s Lane.

Three Presentation Sisters had come from Kilkenny in 1815 at the invitation of the then Warden of Galway, Dr Edmund Ffrench, who pledged a sum of £4,000 towards their maintenance for a six-year term.

The Presentation Sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary had been set up in Cork 1775 by Nano Nagle to help and educate the poor – forty years later, there was no shortage of poverty in Galway.

The nuns’ first base here was in a private house in Kirwan’s Lane where they began providing education to Galway’s poorest girls. They also set up a Breakfast Institute to help tackle the immediate problem of hunger.

When their Kirwan’s Lane house became too small, they moved to Eyre Square for a couple of years before another house – where they still live – was purchased. The Sisters settled there in 1819. Its address is now Presentation Road, a tribute to nuns and their work, but back then, this was part of the countryside and there was a farm attached to the building.

The house had been built in the mid 1700s and was used first as a Protestant Charter School, then as an infirmary for a military barracks. It had fallen into disrepair and needed restoration but it suited the Sisters’ needs and had room in its grounds for a school.  In 1820 the nuns set up the West of Ireland’s first Presentation Elementary School, to accommodate 500 children. The curriculum included needle work such as Limerick lace, Irish point and crochet, as well as reading, writing and arithmetic.

In the early 1820s a space was built to cater for 30 boarders; these girls attended an industrial school also run by the nuns where they learned to sew and make lace, enhancing their employment prospects.

The tradition of the ‘Breakfast Room’ continued, and thousands of children received their morning meal at the Presentation Convent until 1891. This was a huge safety net in a time of extreme poverty when Social Welfare did not exist and famine was common.

Unlike many of the other religious orders which were tainted by scandals of orphanages and mother-and-baby homes, the Presentation Order has emerged with its reputation untarnished.

“The Presentation Order hasn’t been involved. We were lucky not to have had an orphanage,” says Sr Helen Hyland, who is Community Leader at the City’s Presentation Convent.

Since 189 when it opened, 146 Sisters have passed through that building. And as with every religious order, numbers are declining, something Sr Helen is well aware of. The Laois-born nun taught in Galway during the 1980s before moving to Portlaoise and then Belfast where she was involved in social work. She was then based in Athlone for 10 years, where she worked in the Order’s Provincial Leadership team.

When Sr Helen moved back to Galway six years ago, there were 21 Sisters in the convent. Since then, four have died and two have moved to a nursing home. The average age of those remaining is the mid-70s.

But all have been involved in the celebrations, which have been taking place in their three schools – The Secondary, which is located on the convent grounds; Scoil Chroí Íosa, around the corner, and Scoil Bhríde in Shantalla.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.