Old school ties – An Irishman’s Diary on the 1916 Rising and St Malachy’s College in Belfast

Its illustrious 20-century alumni include the author Brian Moore, the footballer and manager Martin O’Neill, and actor Ciaran Hinds. Less well known is the fact that a handful of 19th-century pupils of St Malachy’s College, Belfast, played a significant part in the story of the Easter Rising – the greatest number from any school in Ulster.

One of the leading figures, Major John MacBride, who was second in command to Thomas MacDonagh and helped seize the Jacob’s factory, studied the same subjects as Eoin MacNeill in the college in the 1880s. MacBride, who was from Westport Quay, was sent as a boarder to St Malachy’s. He married Maud Gonne in 1903.

MacBride’s former classmate, MacNeill, who was an Irish-language enthusiast, co-founded the Gaelic League with Douglas Hyde and took a different stance, opposing the Rising because he believed it would fail. MacNeill held the position of chief of staff of the Irish Volunteers but had no role in the insurrection or its planning and took steps to stop it by countermanding it.

Medics

At the heart of the dramatic events were two medical Malachians: Dr Charles J MacAuley, originally from the glens of Antrim and an Irish Volunteer medic in the GPO who witnessed the fighting at close quarters, tending to the wounded Joseph Plunkett; and Dr Patrick MacCartan, an organiser of the IRB who did not take part in the Rising because of MacNeill’s countermanding order but was arrested afterwards and interned in England.

Two others, who were teenage schoolboys at St Malachy’s in the 1890s, Joseph Connolly and Seán MacEntee, were also in the thick of things. Connolly was a leader of the Irish Volunteers in Belfast. Over the Easter weekend, he was courier of the cancellation orders and was later arrested and imprisoned.

MacEntee’s part in the Rising involved sorties from the rebel headquarters and rigging up electrical lighting for the garrison in the GPO.

He was sentenced to death but this was later commuted. One of a small number of Northerners in the first Dáil, MacEntee served in every Fianna Fáil cabinet from 1932 to 1965.

Just why so many former pupils of the college became embroiled in the revolutionary fervour of the times is not clear, although patriotic views were stirring.

The oldest Catholic grammar school in Ulster and one of the oldest in Ireland, the school opened on the feast of St Malachy, November 3rd, 1833. By the 1880s and 1890s it was firmly established as a prestigious institution, boasting a primary school, various tiers of secondary education, and a university class. Hardly a hotbed of political activism, it was run in Victorian times with a strong middle-class Catholic ethos in keeping with an orderly monastic routine. Around 200 pupils were instructed by five priests and lay teachers, adhering to its motto Gloria Ab Intus, "Glory from Within".

In those days, in what was then the northern outskirts of the city, the school ran a working farm with livestock such as pigs and hens. This generated income, which in turn helped reduce the fees. In the early 1880s, before the GAA came into being, the main sports on its playing fields were rugby and soccer.

The school is today proud of the fact that it has produced many figures of national repute in politics – especially constitutional nationalism – church leaders, the law, business, the creative arts and sport. It has just been awarded a Heritage Lottery Fund grant of £600,000 to conserve its books and manuscripts, some donated by the college founders. Its diocesan library, which houses the college archives and Gaelic manuscripts as the centrepiece of the collection, is named after Msgr James O’Laverty. A former student, scholar and historian, he was also a member of the Royal Irish Academy.

Library

Some of the money will be used to restore the library and catalogue its collection of antiquarian books, pamphlets and periodicals. Irish history and theology feature prominently on the glass-fronted, pitch-pine bookcases. But the calf-bound commentaries on the Old Testament are badly in need of cleaning while the grime of decades will be removed from other valuable works. In another link to the troubled times 100 years ago, the library also holds letters written by Michael Collins and Patrick Pearse.

Once the project is completed, the hallowed library space – in the past out of bounds to students – will be open to scholars, researchers and the college community. The renovated library will link to a “cultural corridor”, to view books and displays, while visitors will be able to appreciate the glorious Harry Clarke stained-glass windows in the college chapel, which was restored in 2004.