The Schoolhouse on the Slea Head Drive | Holden Leathergoods

I work every day in a building that was once a national school. Here's its story, as it was told to me.

The workshop building in its early Holden Leathergoods years. 

From Private Estate to Department of Education

In 1927, the newly formed Irish government acquired Lord Ventry's private estate here in Burnham East. The buildings and roughly 100 acres, along with the manor house, became the property of the Department of Education. In 1927 the Sisters of Mercy took over the property as a preparatory school for the education of girls training to become primary teachers.

The rest of the old estate was subdivided into thirteen farms. Those farming families needed a primary school for their children, so part of the Department of Education's property was set aside for building one.

Scoil Fionán Naofa

While the new school was being built, pupils were taught in the estate's old coach house, used as a temporary classroom. The permanent building was completed in 1931 and named Scoil Fionán Naofa.

Decline and Closure

By 1967, numbers at the school had fallen to sixteen pupils and one teacher. That teacher was transferred to Ventry School, and a bus collected the children each morning to bring them there instead. The building passed back into the possession of the Mercy Order that same year.

Changing Hands

In 1983, the school was bought by the Comhar Chumann based in Ballyferriter, who later sold it on to Roinn na Gaeltachta and it became a community hall for the locals and was then used as a summer school for children who came to the Dingle Peninsula to stay with local families and improve their spoken Irish. 

A Personal Connection

Back in 1979, long before any of this was a leather workshop, my sister Naomi attended the school for such an Irish course. My family used the occasion for a holiday in Dingle and I (as a young 15 year old) used to gate crash the Ceilís (Irish dancing) that were held here in the evenings for the children and I learned to set dance in this very building.

Where We Are Now

I started Holden Leathergoods in 1989. By 1993 our first workshop had become too small for us, and we needed to find a new premises, ideally somewhere we could both make and sell. This building, An Seanscoil (‘the Old Schoolhouse’) then in need of a lot of work, and which I had visited as a teenager, was suggested as an option, and so it became part of our story.

At the bench in the early years, working beneath the schoolroom's original windows. 

Conor at work in the early years of Holden Leathergoods. 

If you're ever making your way along the Slea Head Drive, we'd love to have you stop in. You can book a workshop tour or just enjoy a cup of coffee while you browse the shop and see the building for yourself.  We're open seven days a week at this time of year, Monday to Sunday, 9am to 5:30pm.

Warm wishes from Dingle,

Conor & Claire