Let the Busy World Be Hushed: A ramble through 50 years at Breifne College
They call themselves ‘the Retired Ramblers’ and every Tuesday morning - come hail, rain or shine - they gather together to walk for an hour between the showers or to bask in the sunshine outside a café about the town. There they sit huddled with a scone and a tea they reminisce o’er the journey of their lives and how it was that they first met some 50 years and more ago when, as young women on the cusp of life, fate brought them together. From Mayo, Cavan, Clare, Tipperary and Westmeath, they first came to teach in the myriad of prefabs behind the old Technical School on Farnham Street which was added to year on year to meet the growing demand for post primary education in the wake of Donogh O Malley’s 1969 landmark announcement for the provision of free second-level education for all.
The students came on school buses from all the parishes around and from every street in the town of Cavan to benefit from an education that their parents, for the most part, could have only dreamt of. This group of retirees were among the pioneers who led the way in providing a vocational educational for all, first on Farnham Street and then in the Spring of 1974 in a state-of-the-art building on the Cootehill Road site.
On evenings after school they gathered in excitement in this new building readying it for the arrival of students. Science and language laboratories, domestic science, art, woodwork, technical drawing and metal work rooms were all kitted out with the most up-to-date equipment; a canteen and a modern gymnasium for students’ use and even a new staff room, which they hitherto had not known.
The classrooms were bright, the corridors wide, so much so, that two of the male teachers took a lend of a young Irish teacher’s mini car and drove it in through the front door, up the middle corridor turned it down the ‘Mall’ and out another door to prove the corridors’ width.
Along here students sat chatting on park benches, as teachers stopped to talk on their way, for that was the hallmark of the school’s identity - a deep sense of community, a sense of belonging and identity nurtured along these corridors. Teachers greeted students by their name and they worked together to unlock and achieve the potential of each and every individual.
Home school community liaisons were established and pastoral care was doled out in abundance before names were ever given to such things. Teachers visited homes after school in times of bereavement and tragedy, and parents too to convince them of the merit of sending a son or daughter to college or university when such waters, for most, were unchartered in the 1970s.
There was a pre-employment scheme, a secretarial course and an innovative computer course established in the late 1970s for students who had completed the Inter or Leaving Certificate. These proved to be the forerunners of the courses, which made up the early curriculum of Cavan College of Further Education.
For it was from here, within the walls of Cavan Vocational School in the early 1980s, that a small group of teachers departed and established what we now know as Cavan Institute in the classrooms of the St Clare’s Secondary School on Cavan’s Main Street. This, in turn, opened up many new and exciting opportunities for young people of the time, as links were made with the newly established regional technical colleges across the country and with colleges and universities in the UK.
The school from those early days never shied away from catering for the needs of all, for both the academically adept and those with additional needs. A Special Educational Needs department was established before such was heard of in realm of second level education. Among those who have contributed most to the school community were those with the greatest of needs - the love and affection they brought to the everyday of school life softened the edges on even the hardest of exteriors and the trail of memories they left in their wake remains on and on.
Sporting activities in their many forms, Christmas concerts, plays, Stars in Your Eyes, fashion shows, tours to Paris, Rome, Barcelona, the Camino de Santiago, the Austrian Alps and indeed the depths of sub Saharan Africa, all added to the rich tapestry of memories that students carry with them and recall time and time again.
For indeed wherever you go, be it along the streets of Cavan, London or New York, you will inevitably hear a shout from across the road ‘howya sir’ and often the shout is from the once hardest of chaws. And, though decades may have passed, the memories that remain transport you back and the connection that first brought both student and teacher together is reignited as you retrace your steps over all those years.
And so it is that fifty years have passed quickly by as the now retired ramblers gather together over a coffee and recount their days and the time has come for both staff and students of past decades to reunite in the place they first met.
This coming together of the Breifne College community, celebrating its Golden Jubilee on the Cootehill Road site, will take place on the evening of Friday, October 18, beginning at 7pm with a welcoming ceremony, followed by a gala dinner, and dancing to the High Stool Prophets, all taking place in the school’s gymnasium.
The school will be open that evening for past pupils to take a tour around their old haunts and rekindle old memories. Tickets for the celebration are on sale from the school office, which is open each day from 9am to 4pm. They are selling fast so you are advised to get your ticket as soon as you can to avoid disappointment.
Should you have any stories or old photographs of your time in Breifne College that you would like to share, please email them to jasonmurphy@breifnecollege before September 25 for possible inclusion in a commemorative booklet, which will be published to mark the occasion.
We look forward to seeing you all on the night to remember the past and look forward to another 50 years of lives to be lived within the walls of Breifne College.
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