Overlooking nuns’ contribution to Ireland erases women from our history – yet again

Six years ago, South Presentation Convent in Cork (now known as Nano Nagle Place) opened its doors to the public. Founded by Nano Nagle in the 1770s and home, at different times, to Ursuline and Presentation Sisters, it is one of the oldest convents in continuous use in Ireland.

The convent’s location tells a story in itself. Looking up Mary Street from Cork’s south quays, visitors catch a glimpse of a four-storey Georgian building tucked away as if trying to avoid notice. At a time when the penal laws forbade the education of poor Catholic girls, the act of building a convent and schools was both illegal and subversive.

Convents formed the backbone of Irish Catholic society from the late-18th century until well into the 20th century. In 1800 there were 120 nuns living in 19 convents. By 1900, 368 convents were home to more than 8,000 women religious, and these numbers continued to increase annually until the mid-1960s.

It may seem counterintuitive, but in a patriarchal and misogynistic world, entering a convent often granted a woman greater freedom than she would have had as wife and mother. Many nuns attended university, many had fulfilling and varied careers. Female religious orders were significant as employers – of teachers and healthcare staff, of staff in the convents and of those who provided goods and services to the convents.

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To focus only on the terrible injustices means we are in danger of telling a lopsided story of Ireland from the late-18th century to the turn of the 21st

Well into the 20th century, women’s education was not important to the Irish State. As Olivia O’Leary has recently noted, Irish women “got a better education from nuns that they would have got from the State which didn’t care much about women other than to point out that their place was in the home”.

The horrific experiences of many women and children in mother and baby homes, Magdalene laundries and industrial schools have become well known over the past few decades and the appalling behaviour of many of those who worked in these places has been rightly condemned.

But to focus only on the terrible injustices means we are in danger of telling a lopsided story of Ireland from the late-18th century to the turn of the 21st.

Nuns, in their distinctive black habits, used to be a familiar sight across the country, as were their homes. The convents these nuns lived in are (or were) ubiquitous, often dominating towns and villages. Many of these convents are of simple architectural design but all are of significance for a variety of social and historical reasons.

It is impossible to fully understand the development of Ireland without considering the significance of the woman religious orders

Their location in a village, town or city had a huge impact on the surrounding area as schools, housing and service industries grew up around them. They were such a common feature of the landscape that they became almost invisible and it is only now, as they and the nuns are disappearing, that their significance is beginning to be recognised.

It is impossible to fully understand the development of Ireland without considering the significance of the woman religious orders. Overlooking their contributions to communities across the country erases women (once again) from history. And there is an urgency about recording the history of the buildings and landscapes, their material culture and the lives of the women who lived in the convents before it is too late.

A 1971 episode of the Radharc documentary series began: “In Ireland we tend to take nuns for granted. They’ve always been here, they’ll always be here.” This statement is no longer true.

In 1966 there were 13,409 nuns in the Republic of Ireland (more than twice the number of professed clergymen in the country). Today there are fewer than 4,000 nuns and their average age is over 80.

It is not sufficient to consider all nuns as cruel overseers of laundries, mother and baby homes and industrial schools

As the number of nuns declines, their convents are abandoned, sold off and demolished, or repurposed. It is not only convents that are closing but friaries and monasteries too. Recently the Franciscans closed their friaries in Athlone and Clonmel – towns that they had had a presence in since the 13th century.

People have studied medieval religious ruins for hundreds of years to try to understand what life was like inside these buildings and yet here we are with inhabited buildings at the end of an era, and their history is going unrecorded. Written material can only tell us so much. The buildings, their contents, their inhabitants combine to create little worlds and we are rapidly losing the lived experience of being inside those worlds.

Unlike the habit, the story of nuns and convents in Ireland is not black and white. It’s far more complex than that. It is not sufficient to consider all nuns as cruel overseers of laundries, mother and baby homes and industrial schools, or as comic characters such as Sr Michael in Derry Girls or Sr Assumpta in Father Ted. We lose a lot by concentrating on the extremes, whether cruel or comic.

Time is of the essence. For centuries, religious buildings – be they convents, friaries or monasteries – were key landmarks in towns, cities and villages across the country. The men and women who lived and worked in them were hugely influential (for good or ill). The stories of the communities (inside and outside the buildings) must be recorded, and they must be recorded now.

Gillian O’Brien is Reader in Modern Irish History at Liverpool John Moores University