Documentary on De La Salle school
By Maurice Garvey
HISTORIAN Sean Brennan will present a screening of his new documentary about the 67-year history of De La Salle School in Ballyfermot Library, on Wednesday, October 9 at 6pm.
Brennan, a videographer with Ballyfermot Heritage Group, released another documentary last year to celebrate the area’s 70th year anniversary ‘Ballyfermot in the Beginning’.
Sean Brennan and Ken Larkin
The De La Salle School documentary ‘Through The Years’ contains old and new footage, from pre-planning stages of the school building and monastery, right up the last day of the school on June 28, 2019.
“Most of the film is from our archives, with information on who built it, and photographs of the Archbishop blessing the stones in 1950,” said Brennan.
“It was one of the biggest schools in Ireland at the time. The government asked the De La Salle brothers to set up a school. The original idea was on the grounds of the Royal Hospital in Kilmainham, but it turned out, they bought the land in Ballyfermot.”
The documentary is approximately one hour and 10 minutes long, and will also feature clips from Rocky Road to Dublin, a 1967 documentary, and clips from a 1956 RTÉ edition of School Around the Corner.
“Thomas Walsh, a famous composer from Ballyfermot was in Paddy Crosby’s School Around the Corner when he was six years old,” said Brennan.
“The last bit of the documentary is the school closing. We spent a week there in the last week, interviewing teachers, past and present.
“On the last day, Friday, June 28, the teachers are eating – like the Last Supper, and the end is the school gates closing for a final time.”
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