Slice of religious life up for auction in Tralee

More than a century and a half of religious life will go under the hammer tomorrow as the contents of a Mercy Order convent are sold.

Hundreds of people have already been through the convent at Balloonagh in Tralee ahead of tomorrow’s auction — some there for nostalgia and others hoping to find a bargain among the treasure trove of antiques, religious icons, paintings, china and glassware.

For the 17 remaining nuns at Balloonagh Mercy Convent, it will be a sad occasion as the items that furnished their home, school and community are sold to the highest bidder.

Sr Dorothea Foley, a native of Tralee, has spent the last six years of her life in Balloonagh.

She says it’s a sad occasion, especially for some of the nuns in her community who have spent 50 years of their lives in the convent.

Now they are relocated to various houses in the area.

Sr Dorothea says the items that make up the 500-plus individual lots peak of the different events that happened in the convent and the various people that had been influenced in some way by their ministry.

“It’s lovely to have people visit and remind us of their years in the school and the influence the sisters had on their lives but, of course, there’s also sadness that we’re leaving what was home,” Sr Dorothea says.

“The way we feel about it is that we’re grateful for the years we lived here but we’re also grateful to have a new roof over our head.”

She said the nuns were also thankful that some pieces from their collection are going to local churches and houses of prayer.

Denis Lynes of Lynes & Lynes in Cork, who is handling the auction, says the event has generated a lot of interest from overseas, as well as from all over the country.

“There’s some good furniture here because back in the 1920s when furniture from the Collis-Sandes house in Oakpark was being sold off, this convent got a lot of it,” he says.

“The Balloonagh Convent is a Gothic building, that was the fashion of the day, and Collis-Sandes house in Oakpark was also a Gothic house, so it blended in well here.”

These pieces are stamped by the well-known Dublin furniture-maker Robert Strachan. Other pieces bear the stamp of Foley’s in Tralee that is also long gone.

Other items for auction include church brass, catering equipment, china ware, and cooking equipment, all in an immaculate condition and some from the Mercy Convent in Rosscarbery.

The Mercy Order established its convent at Balloonagh in 1858 and was one of two Mercy secondary schools in the town that amalgamated a number of years ago in Mercy Mounthawk.

The convent building is owned by the Diocese of Kerry.

The auction starts at 10.30am in the sports hall.