History of St. Al’s

St. Aloysius School began in a large room in a house in Rutland Street in 1839 at the suggestion of Mother Catherine McAuley, foundress of the Sisters of Mercy. Here in this house the sisters lived and taught for thirteen years.

In 1852 the sisters moved to their present location of St. Maries of the Isle and in two big rooms in the Convent continued to teach girls and boys who came every day for lessons. A hedged-off portion of the convent garden was used as a school playground.

In 1893 the school relocated across the road in the buildings which became affectionately known by generations of Aloysians as ‘The Old School’. This ‘Old School’, demolished in 1978 for safety reasons, occupied the grass area inside the school gate.

In this ‘Old School’ generations of Aloysians were educated and in 1924 the ‘Railway Field’ was purchased. This gave room for expansion and so in 1927 the then big school buildings which gained the name ‘The New School’ were opened, while the rest of the Railway Field became the playing fields and tennis courts.

Later in 1962 the New Wing was added and in 1972 an upper storey and additional blocks which housed new classrooms, laboratories, special subject rooms, a library, a gym hall and a general purposes room (now the canteen). Since then, school facilities including the Computer Room, Music Room, Science Laboratories and Home Economics Rooms keep up with modern changes in technology.

The whole complex of bright airy rooms over-looking a pleasant, tree-lined field beside the River Lee, is very different from the large room in Rutland Street where it began but the same dedication and loyalty are still to be found here more than a century later. In 2019 the school proudly celebrated its 180th. anniversary of involvement in education.