When we went and interviewed the nuns they told us a lot about the old Abbey house that they used to live in for many years. From 1823 to 1999 the Abbey House was used as a boarding school for girls. They used the imported red bricks for the main centre building from a Dutch ship. They used to use these bricks to weigh down their ships when travelling over seas. Then they used to dump the red bricks in Dublin port where mother Mary Frances Treasa Ball found them to use for the second layer of the building because they matched the original colour of the bricks. The Abbey served as the senior secondary school for Loreto High School Beaufort until 1952. In 1996, the school began to not accept new boarders and in 1999, the school’s doors were closed.
On the Wednesday after our interviews with the nuns sister Kathleen came in and talked to us and she was wearing a habit. It was so cool and she taught us lots about how they used to use hazelnut shells to make the beads on their rosary beads instead of using real beads. By Sophia Denning
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