Fermoy schools celebrate final graduations before amalgamation

Two of the oldest primary schools in North Cork have amalgamated to form a new co-educational Catholic school, with both schools celebrating the graduations of their final individual sixth classes.

Fermoy’s Presentation Primary School and Bishop Murphy Memorial School both trace their roots back to Timothy Murphy, a Catholic priest born in 1789, who in 1833, established the town’s first national school at Cork Hill, now the CYMS Hall.

That school provided education for both boys and girls, but five years after its foundation, Fr Murphy invited the Presentation Sisters to Fermoy to teach the girls separately.

Through An Gorta Mór he served as Fermoy parish priest, gaining a reputation for great kindness, and he was appointed bishop of Cloyne and Ross in 1849.

Continuing to champion education, he brought the Loreto Sisters to Fermoy and laid the foundation stone of St Colman’s College, though he died, in 1856, before its completion.

In 1863, his successor, Bishop William Keane, invited the Christian Brothers to teach boys in the school Fr Murphy had established on Cork Hill, which in 1905 moved to a new premises, at what has been until now the Bishop Murphy Memorial School.

Now, more than a century later, times have changed, and single-sex schools are no longer as popular as once they were.

Reflecting that change in attitudes, the Presentation and Bishop Murphy schools are to become one co-educational school, the Holy Family Primary School.

The principal of the former Presentation school, Leona O’Connell, is to become principal of the new school, with Bishop Murphy principal Joe Aherne becoming administrative deputy principal.

Mr Aherne said told The Echo it was a very emotional time in the town, with both individual schools this week seeing the graduations of their final sixth classes.

“The celebrations of the amalgamation have been lovely, but with the final sixth class of Bishop Murphy’s graduating, it feels very strange,” he said.

“Thousands of children have passed through the doors of our two schools, each leaving their own mark, and now we can look forward to a new chapter built on the foundations of two proud traditions.”