Hockey, pals.. and sneaking out to the cinema — boarding school life in Blackrock for Mary Martin

Mary, wife of Taoiseach Mícheál Martin boarded at Ursuline College in Cork 50 years ago and this week as they celebrate 200 years in the Cork suburb she headed back to check out her home away from home

Mary Martin at the Ursulines Secondary School, Blackrock, Cork. Picture Dan Linehan

If you'd been in the environs of Cork's Ursuline College Blackrock on a Saturday evening around 1980, you might have spotted a young Mary Martin walking down the avenue, ostensibly to visit her
godmother but really heading to the cinema.

“I remember this sneaking into town. There were always girls who had to go down that avenue, and get back again without being caught, after being at the cinema. I was lucky — my father had given me a letter saying I was allowed out to visit my godmother. Years later, Sr Mary McDaid said the nuns always knew I’d gone to the cinema too. They couldn’t challenge me because of the letter — they’d have had to say it was my father told the lie!”

“But we weren’t doing anything much, just going to the cinema. It was an innocent era.”

In the lamp-lit hush of the library at Ursuline College, Mary, wife of Taoiseach Micheál Martin, recalled affectionately her days as a boarder here between 1975 and 1980 — Ursuline College is Ireland’s oldest continuously running girls’ school and, this year, celebrates its 200th
anniversary in the Cork suburb.

Mary Martin at the Ursulines Secondary School, Blackrock, Cork. Picture Dan Linehan

Boarding school ran in her family — her mother had boarded: “She thought it would be good for our education. My sister and I were among the last 20 boarders at Ursuline College.”

For the young girl from Midleton, the transition wasn’t traumatic — she’d boarded in Scoil na nÓg in sixth class: “Up to Inter Cert, we only went home at mid-term and holidays, but my parents were always up and down. For the last two years, you could go home every weekend if you wanted. I didn’t, I was one of those
involved students, busy playing hockey — hockey was our big bond in the school. Whether you were a day pupil or boarder, we all played.

“I wasn’t on the first XI. I wanted to be, but … not always getting what you want is a good lesson in life. I was on the B team, and got great fun out of it — my picture’s on the wall somewhere down the corridor. Hockey really was the glue in the school.”

“I was into debating too and definitely a studious kid. My favourite subjects were taught by teachers I liked. I loved geography and maths. There was this wonderful teacher, Maureen Clarke, who’d played on the Irish hockey team. She helped our PE teacher, Mary Purcell, with hockey.”

Describing how she’s still Mary O’Shea for a lot of her life — “when I play golf, I’m Mary O’Shea” — she returned to Ursuline College as
Ms O’Shea to do her H Dip.

“I dreaded going into the staff room — being in the same room as people who’d taught me. I was still only 20 — I thought it a huge age divide, but some of those teachers weren’t much older than myself!”

Mary Martin at the Ursulines Secondary School, Blackrock, Cork. Picture Dan Linehan

Ursuline College gave her “a good system of values” — long before Transition Year, students did community work, visiting the nursing home at St Patrick’s: “I remember a young girl, probably in her 20s, who’d had a riding accident. She was unconscious. We were to talk to her, tell her about our lives, our stories. We didn’t realise then this was showing us we needed to look after other people, that other people need looking after.”

The nuns ran the boarding school, and she recalls being marked on discipline, punctuality, order, and discipline. “Certainly at the beginning, you were nearly afraid of what was going to happen if it wasn’t good. I was very good on everything, except order! If you went below a certain threshold, you got a white card. You were expected to follow the rules, but there was never anything that had any sense of cruelty about it.”

Mary was looking forward to the bicentennial gala on Saturday last. For the 11 school pals who’d be at her table, it would be a reunion and “a bit of a time capsule”.

It’s not like they were “bound at the hip” even at school, but they were all pals: “In boarding school, everybody’s a bit like your sister.”

And while she has met some of the women over the years, and they know what has happened in each other’s lives, others she hasn’t: “When you haven’t met somebody in many years, you don’t know the good things or the sad things. We’ll all have to respect that in each other.”

Mary Martin at the Ursulines Secondary School, Blackrock, Cork. Picture Dan Linehan

Sitting in the ‘new’ Ursuline College, which opened its doors in 2002, Mary says this isn’t “her school” — though the 1980s hockey photos in the corridor are a link to the historic building beside us that housed the school from 1825. It was from this building that — ironically for Mary — Peter Barry, a Fine Gael politician, brought her on her first visit to Dáil Éireann as part of a school tour.

“When I drive up the avenue now, I love to look over at the rose window and think of how I slept in that room for two years.”

With social media having massively accelerated, she wishes today’s teens “could have a life with more innocence”.

As for her and her school pals: “I was on the phone to one of them last night. Her mother had been a pupil here too, and she remembered her talking about ‘going out with her Ursuline friends’. And suddenly, now... we’re the old past pupils!

• As a proud Ursuline, Mary returned as guest speaker for her former school’s 200th Year Celebration fundraising event which took place in the Maryborough House Hotel on Saturday November 8th— for those wishing to find out more about the Ursuline College Blackrock or support the school's plans for the future, please visit the Ursuline College Blackrock Cork website at https://ursulinecork.com