Lord Mayor of Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Councillor Garath Keating invited St Mary’s School students, in Tassagh, to read out their poems at a reception in the Palace Stables in Armagh on Thursday 10th November.
The children read their emotive poems and sang songs they created in the past years as part of our Poetry in Motion Schools programme. They also had the opportunity to discover the underground tunnel!
The speech
As part of the Poetry in Motion project, our class have been writing our own poems based on the theme ‘The Chapel on the Hill’.
We visited the ruins of the old chapel and graveyard beside our school to get inspiration and learned a lot about the history of the place and how the chapel came to be built. It faces a field where a Mass Rock once stood. The chapel was built for the people of Granemore after the penal laws in Ireland and must have seemed like a cathedral after worshipping in the open air at the mass rock. The old chapel is now abandoned but still holds a special place in the heart of our community.
Our poems are a reminder of some of the difficult times in our past but also a celebration of our history. We hope you enjoy them.
