Loading

  • 21 Aug, 2019

  • By, Wikipedia

The King's Hospital
The Hospital and Free School of King Charles II, Oxmantown, also called The King's Hospital (KH; Irish: Scoil Ospidéal an Rí) is a Church of Ireland co-educational independent day and boarding school situated in Palmerstown, County Dublin, Ireland. It is on an 80-acre campus beside the River Liffey, called Brooklawn, named after the country houses situated on the site and in which the headmaster and his family reside. The school is also a member of the HMC Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference and the BSA.

Founded in 1669, it is one of the oldest schools in Ireland and was also known as the Blue Coat School. Although priority is given to those of the main Protestant denominations, as a Christian school, it is attended by students of other Christian denominations and other faiths. The school's colours are navy and gold. The school crest is three burning castles with the date "1669", almost identical to the crest for Dublin city. The current headmaster is Mark Ronan.

History

Founding

An illustration of the school from Charles Brooking's map of Dublin in 1728. The building was constructed between 1669 and 1673 and was demolished to make way for the new building around 1772.
The Blackhall Place building, circa 1890. A new cupola was being added.

The school was founded in 1669 as The Hospital and Free School of King Charles II and was located in Queen Street, Dublin. King's Hospital was a continuation of the old Free School of Dublin. On 5 May 1674, the school opened with 60 pupils, including 3 girls. From 1783 to 1971, the school was located in Blackhall Place, Dublin, currently the headquarters of the Law Society of Ireland.

During the early seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, it was used as the site of elections to the Irish Parliament's Dublin City constituency. When this was changed to the Tholsel for the 1713 general election, it led to the Dublin election riot.

Morgan's takeover

The take-over of Morgan's School (1957) contributed to steadily increasing numbers of students, and by 1970, a need for extra space and facilities led to the move from the city centre to a modern purpose-built school set in its own 100-acre (400,000 m) site on the banks of the River Liffey in Palmerstown, County Dublin.

Erwin Schrödinger

A 57-year-old manuscript by the Nobel Prize in Physics winning physicist Erwin Schrödinger resurfaced at the school in 2012. Entitled "Fragment From An Unpublished Dialogue Of Galileo", it was written for the school's 1955 edition of the annual Blue Coat magazine to coincide with Schrödinger leaving Dublin to take up his appointment as Chair of Physics at the University of Vienna. Schrödinger wrote the manuscript for the school's former English teacher and Editor of the Blue Coat magazine, Ronnie Anderson (now deceased), a friend of Schrödinger when he lived in Dublin. It is now in the possession of King's Hospital alumnus Professor Jonathan Coleman in CRANN at Trinity College Dublin.

Structure

The school is co-educational and caters for some 720 pupils, roughly 440 day pupils and 280 boarders in 2018/19. The King's Hospital has students from all over Ireland and from overseas. Students from Germany and Spain are the most common international students.

The School is divided into five boarding houses: Bluecoat, Mercer, Grace, Morgan and Ormonde and five day pupil houses. Each boarding house has its own resident housemaster or housemistress.

Sport

Rugby being played at King's Hospital

The school has a gymnasium and sports hall with an advanced fitness center. The school also has access to a swimming pool, grass hockey pitch, rugby pitches and tennis courts.

Various sports (with a focus on rugby) are played on campus and training is provided by staff. The school has teams for rugby, hockey, cricket, athletics, cross-country, badminton, soccer, basketball and swimming.

Notable past pupils

Past pupil Taoiseach Leo Varadkar TD

Notable headmasters