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The moduli space of rank 2 stable, locally-free sheaves with fixed odd degree determinant over a smooth, projective curve is a classical object. In the early 1970s, Newstead gave the generators of the cohomology ring of this moduli space. There are generalizations of this result to higher rank, but nothing is known for the case when the underlying curve is singular. In this article, we generalize Newstead's result to the case when the underlying curve is irreducible, nodal. We show that the generators of the cohomology ring in the nodal curve case arise naturally as degeneration of Newstead's generators in the smooth curve case.