Early Days
Education has always been a priority for the people who lived in the area where Moneydarragh School now stands. Before there was a school building at all, there was a hedge school for those who wanted to learn to read and write.

The hedge school was sited either beside the river or down the lane on the other side of the road. Thomas Digney taught in the hedge school.

Old Hedge School

The First Schoolhouse
The earliest written evidence that there was a school building in Moneydarragh can be seen in the Commissioners of Education Inquiry 2nd Report in 1826. The building, which was built with stone and clay was valued at £5. It was a pay school.
There were eleven children attending lessons, six boys and five girls. Seven were Catholics and four were Presbyterians. The teacher was John McVey and he was paid £3 per year.

Records show that a new school building was erected in 1831. It faced the river and had two rooms, one measuring 14ft. x 12ft x 10ft and the other measuring 30ft x 14ft x 10ft.

It is on record that Thomas Digney was the teacher in 1855. His daughter Catherine had already been monitress with him for four years when she was appointed Assistant Teacher on March 1st 1855.

Well paid Teachers!
A teacher's salary in 1855 was £20, and by 1877 it had risen to £25. As early as 1849 as well as classes during the day, the building was used for night classes. In 1862, when Annie Rogers was Headmistress, there were seventy Catholics and one Presbyterian on the rolls. Religious Education was taught to the Catholic children on Saturday morning from 10.00 am to 12.00 noon. It is likely that this had been the practice since the early days of the school.

The Second Schoolhouse
Work on a new school building began in 1897, and was completed in the following year. John Quinn from Mill Road, Kilkeel cut the wood and erected the roof on the school. The school was opened on 1st March 1898. It was divided into a Boys' School and a Girls' School, and a high stone wall separated the two units. This wall kept boys and girls apart both in the classroom, and in the playground, and its remains can still be seen at the back of the school to this day. The first Principal of the Boys' School was W.H.K. McAleer. Records show that Annie McVeigh was appointed Principal of the Girls' School in 1901, but it is not known who acted as Principal from 1898 until 1901.

The records for the Boys' School are not available.
The Principal's salary in 1907 was £17:4:9 for a quarter year, and a Junior Assistant Mistress was paid £6 with £4 extra if she taught Cookery and Laundry. This allowance was later discontinued, but Cookery and Laundry were taught up to the 1950's.

The Girls School
In the Girls' School, where upward of sixty girls were taught, there were nine desks, each nine feet long, and six long forms. At least fifty girls were enrolled when the school opened in 1898. In 1908 there were sixty-three girls on roll, and by 1908 the numbers had risen to eighty-three. The number of classes varied from year to year.

Renovations in the 1950s
A new classroom was erected in the early 50's. It was a Nissen hut which had been purchased from Army supplies, and served first as a classroom and then as a dining hall for the children until a dining hall was erected in 1989. In the year 1953-54 a new outside toilet block was built, and the school was connected for electricity in 1954/55. In 1970 tarmac was put on the school yard for the first time.

Three mobile classrooms were added between 1968 and 1995. Major renovations took place during the 1980's. These included the installation of oil-fired central heating, an office and library, an indoor toilet block, new doors, ceilings and windows, water in every classroom and new furnishings and fittings

Above is the schoolbuilding as it stands today.