Qualla: Castleknock College

Castleknock College: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bigbossfarin, Public domain. Two hills rise from the seventy acres of Castleknock College. One is topped by the broken walls of a thirteenth-century Norman castle. The other, called Windmill Hill, is reputed to be the burial mound of Cumhal, father of the legendary warrior Fionn mac Cumhaill. In June 2007 archaeologists digging that second hill found four early Christian skeletons. They could not confirm the legend, but they could not dispel it either. This is the ground on which a small Vincentian boarding school was opened in 1835 with forty-seven boys. Today, almost two centuries later, the school sits beside Phoenix Park and the Farmleigh Estate, and its register of past pupils reads like an index of modern Irish public life.

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Image: Bigbossfarin | Public domain

Castleknock College: Built in the Year After Emancipation

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Clarke, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Vincentians arrived first in Maynooth, where they trained priests. In 1830, the year after Catholic Emancipation finally permitted Catholics back into public life in Ireland, they obtained permission from the Archbishop of Dublin to open a day school. They began in central Du...

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Image: Peter Clarke | CC BY-SA 3.0

Castleknock College: The Queen's Visit

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Laurel Lodged, CC BY-SA 4.0. On 22 April 1900, Queen Victoria came to call. The visit had been arranged a few days in advance by Rudolph Feilding, 9th Earl of Denbigh, and its significance was immediately understood: this was the first time in history that an English sovereign had set foot inside an Irish Ca...

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Image: Laurel Lodged | CC BY-SA 4.0

Castleknock College: Rugby and Stilts

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Laurel Lodged, CC BY-SA 4.0. From its founding, the school played sport with intensity. For decades the entire student body played a game peculiar to Castleknock called stilts, on a gravel patch in the grounds, until the priests judged the over-zealous play too dangerous and replaced it with soccer. In 1909 ...

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Image: Laurel Lodged | CC BY-SA 4.0

Castleknock College: The Pastmen

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John Singer Sargent, Public domain. The alumni list is staggering for a single school. Two Taoisigh - Liam Cosgrave and, through one of those Irish education quirks, the school where Éamon de Valera taught for a year in 1910-11. One President of Ireland. Five Attorneys General. Two Supreme Court justices. Three arc...

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Image: John Singer Sargent | Public domain