Janesboro School
At a Glance
Origins History
The school history places Janesboro within the transformation of a rural edge of Limerick into a built-up estate. It says the Barry family home stood opposite the present Wilmount Estate, that Limerick Corporation later demolished it and built housing, and that the new estate was called Janesboro. The same account notes that local boys and girls had attended Presentation School on Sexton Street until the need for a school in the area became evident.
The record then gives a dated sequence for the school’s foundation. In 1950 Canon Rice of Donoughmore invited the Presentation Sisters to open a junior school in Janesboro, and the sisters bought two fields from Joe Barry of Southill House. The foundation stone was laid early in 1951, and the seven-room school was opened and blessed by Bishop O’Neill on 2 July 1951. The school history identifies the patronage as Our Lady Queen of Peace.
Founding Staff
The same school account names the first staff of the new school on 2 July 1951. It lists Mary Toomey, Annie Ryan, Power, and four sisters: Magdalen, Aloysius, Alphonsus, and Celsus, with Sr Celsus identified as first principal. The passage is also careful about later absence, noting that four of these pioneers had since died. That detail offers a small but clear internal marker of continuity between the founding team and the later written remembrance.
The school history also records later additions to the teaching staff after expansion in the 1950s. In 1956, it says, the growing population in Janesboro made a second storey necessary for senior pupils, and the new level opened on 2 July 1956. At that time Srs Lorenzo, Francis, Gemma, Concepta, and teachers Noreen Crowe and Chris Power joined the original staff, showing a school that expanded in step with local housing growth.
Building Growth
The physical history of the site is unusually specific. An excerpt attributed to Sr Francis describes the school land as an orchard that later became grazing ground for horses. It mentions a small gate, a built-up gateway, cow byres, a harness room, and a well in the middle of the field. These details make clear that the school was built on land with an agricultural past, before later school works altered the setting further.
The same account notes a practical redesign of the site. When plans were drawn up, Limerick Corporation asked that the school be set back further from the road in front, because the Ring Road was in planning. The result was that the boiler house ended up with a spring well. This is a direct record of how the school’s layout was adjusted in response to a proposed road scheme, not a broader claim about city planning.
Community Change
The history page ties the school’s early decades to growth in the surrounding suburb. It states that after the first opening, the number of houses increased and the population rose, making a local school more necessary. In 1956 the expansion is linked directly to new housing schemes in Janesboro. This is evidence of change in the area as the school describes it, while the document itself does not attempt to analyse why that growth occurred.
The wider Limerick archives also preserve Janesboro as a named place in other formats. The online project From Limerick With Love includes a Janesboro photograph entry from the 1970s, showing that the district appears in the city’s visual archive beyond the school history page. That record does not by itself describe the school building, but it confirms that Janesboro remained a recognisable locality in later documentary and photographic work.
Later Record
A 2019 newspaper report shows the school still active under the name Our Lady Queen of Peace, Janesboro. It describes a new astroturf pitch that had been designed and manufactured in Shannon and formally opened by the principal, the mayor, and a company chief executive. The article also says the school was the alma mater of hockey player Roisin Upton, but the most secure point here is simply that the school remained a functioning institution with new facilities in place by that date.
The same report adds another later detail when it says Sister Claire Morrisey was the first person through the doors of the school in 1954. That statement sits beside the article’s description of the 2019 ceremony and beside the school history’s 1951 foundation date, so the two records are not identical in emphasis. They nevertheless both present Janesboro as a place with a long-running institutional memory within the same school community.
Present Context
The school’s own current history page identifies it as Our Lady Queen of Peace School, Janesboro, and places its span as 1951 to the present. It also states that the mission statement was drawn up and implemented by the Presentation tradition, and that the school has maintained a framed copy of that statement inside the main door. Those details show a living institution presenting its own continuity through language, display, and named patronage.
The same page extends the school’s story beyond the founding generation by noting later achievements of past pupils and by listing the school as still active after 1951. In that sense, the available material presents Janesboro school as both a dated historical institution and a continuing educational presence. The sources do not offer a full administrative history, but they do allow a continuous outline from site purchase and opening to later expansion and present use.
