5th & 6th Class

We have been learning about two specific topics in Irish history, a focus on The Famine and Dublin Tenement Housing in the early 20th Century. We read “Under the Hawthorn Tree” and also we used the 1901 and 1911 census to see how many people lived in various houses and what other information was recorded. We went to visit 14, Henrietta Street –Emily Eyres wrote a report (below).

It was a fascinating place and brought Dublin Tenements to life for us!

In PE we are doing Futsal and also Tag Rugby with Leinster Rugby, we are getting very fit! In art we have produced some lovely paintings as we are learning how to build up a picture step by step.

Visit to Henrietta Street by Emily Eyres

We went to Number 14 Henrietta Street, it’s a very tall and big house. We saw rooms that once had 13 people living in that one room. They had mattresses made of horse hair and used coats as duvets. The hallways were completely dark so if you were going up the stairs you had to bang on the stairs to scare the rats and mice away! I learned that children used to tie a rope on to a lamp post and swing around. There was one toilet out in the yard for one hundred people so you had a chamber pot in your flat. You had to wash your clothes in the same bath you had your weekly bath in, and you shared the bathwater with your whole family! The last tenant left in 1979!