The next story we share from our 125 stories of MLMC to celebrate the College’s 125th anniversary this year is from 1901 and highlights our connections to Ireland, the home of Catherine McAuley.
1901 — the Irish connection
‘Cead Mile Failte’, meaning a hundred thousand welcomes. Throughout the years of the College there has always been a strong Irish connection, from Catherine McAuley and those Sisters who came from Ireland and set foot on Rourke’s Hill to begin Mount Lilydale Mercy College. A hundred thousand welcomes and more the Sisters would have offered the community then and we continue that welcome today.
Most of the early Sisters of Mercy at Lilydale had come from Ireland and they certainly gave the school a strong Irish flavour in those early days. The first Principal appointed was Mother Patrick Maguire, who had been born in Market Square, Enniscorthy, Ireland and had entered the Convent of Mercy in Wexford in 1867 before becoming a founding Sister and later Superior at the Carrick-on-Suir Convent. At the request of Mother Mary Alocque Ryan, she and Mother Brigid Bradshaw came from Ireland to Mansfield and then on to Lilydale to serve. One story has it that it was Mother Patrick’s father who donated the money that purchased the land for the school.
With the increase in the number of pupils, Mother Patrick appealed to the Convent of Mercy at Carrick-on-Suir for the assistance of more Sisters and soon after, in 1901, Sisters Gertrude Power, Margaret Mary Campbell, Patrick Gilligan and a postulant, Ita Lynch, arrived from Ireland. It was not surprising then that when Archbishop Carr visited the school he was greeted by the Celtic welcome ‘Cead Mile Failte’, one hundred thousand welcomes, draped on one wall.
Kay Reardon, a boarder during the 1940s, remembers St Patrick’s Night when the “nuns got us up at midnight and with our blankets around our shoulders we would go to the pavilion and sing Irish songs”.
