Publications | Down Survey | 2001 Issue Contents

The Famine in County Down: New Resources for Schools
Linda McKenna

In November 2001 Down County Museum and the South Eastern Education and Library Board launched two new resource packs for schools on the subject of the great Irish famine in County Down. The packs are designed to encourage pupils at Key Stage Two and Key Stage Three to become more familiar with using and investigating historical sources, extend their skills in interrogating evidence, and learn more about life in County Down at this crucial point in Irish history.

The packs concentrate on one major local source, the Downpatrick Recorder, which throughout the famine years, reported on the impact the devastating failure of the potato crop had on the local area. From 1845 until 1849 the paper contains a wealth of information on everything from the overcrowding in the Downpatrick Workhouse and the establishment of soup kitchens at Saul and Ballee, to meetings of local agricultural improvement committees and the complaints of local residents about increases in the poor rate. From this extensive collection of material relevant to the famine years, the SEELB's history advisor, Cheryl Stafford and the Museum's Community Education Officer, Linda McKenna, worked on a selection of extracts which pupils at Key Stage Two and Three could successfully investigate, and which would give an accurate picture of how the famine was perceived and experienced in County Down.

At Key Stage Two the emphasis of the material is to bring to life the concerns of some of the personalities involved in the life and death decisions of this period. Pupils are also encouraged to think about our attitudes to famine in the world today. This age group will also be able to experience a special focus visit on the famine which will be available at the museum from November 2001. This session concentrates on two activities. Pupils will explore the case of a poor girl from the townland of Killinchy-in-the-Wood in the poor law division of Crossgar, who died on the steps of the Downpatrick Workhouse having been carried there by her mother. They will re-enact a role-play based on this case and come to their own conclusions about who (if anybody) was responsible for the girls' death. The other activity will focus on life in the Downpatrick Workhouse, with pupils carrying out a range of contextualised tasks.

At Key Stage Three the emphasis is very much on understanding behaviour of the time. Pupils are asked to investigate the behaviour of particular landlords, and the operation of famine relief based on the prevailing political, economic and social philosophies of the time. They are asked to 'think themselves' into the mindsets of the time to see how attitudes to the poor and tenants, notions of charity, and ideas of the social responsibilities of the well-off all combined to create a complex web of official and philanthropic responses to the disaster. The second major purpose of this pack for older pupils, is to examine how the famine was interpreted at the time and in the present day. Pupils are presented with reports, cartoons and illustrations from the Downpatrick Recorder, the Illustrated London News and Punch, and with articles from today's Irish Times, and are asked to work out what effect newspaper interpretations of 'the facts' of history have on how we perceive the 'truth' of what actually happened.

The strength of the resource packs and activities will be their focus on the picture in County Down, which will enable teachers to compare and contrast the local picture with what was happening in the rest of Ireland. The Museum is grateful to the Friends of Down County Museum and the Down Recorder for sponsoring the printing of the packs and Deirdre Armstrong of the Library Service of the SEELB for her invaluable help in illuminating the sources.

Linda McKenna is Community Education Officer at Down County Museum