Qualla: Kilkenny College

Kilkenny College: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Jonathan Swift went here. So did George Berkeley, after whom the university city of Berkeley, California is named. William Congreve, the Restoration playwright, was a student. George Farquhar, another Restoration dramatist. Abraham Colles, the Royal College of Surgeons president whose name lives on in every emergency department in the world thanks to the Colles fracture. The 1st Earl Beatty, who commanded the Grand Fleet at Jutland. Kilkenny College has been quietly producing influential men and women since 1538 -- nearly five centuries -- and the newest classroom block is named, fittingly, the Jonathan Swift block.

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Kilkenny College: Comme Je Trouve

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The college motto, Comme je trouve, is French for 'As I find.' It comes from the coat of arms of the Butler family, the great Anglo-Norman dynasty whose Earls and Dukes of Ormond patronised the school for centuries. The motto is meant to encourage grit -- the idea of striving thr...

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Kilkenny College: From Three Professors to One Pupil

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The school closed for a stretch in the 1650s during the upheaval that followed the English Civil War's spillover into Ireland. It reopened as Kilkenny College in 1667 under James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormond, who continued the family tradition of patronising education. It soon beca...

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Kilkenny College: The Alumni Roll

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The list of distinguished past pupils reads like an Anglo-Irish hall of fame. Jonathan Swift, the satirist who gave the world Gulliver's Travels and served as Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral Dublin, was a student. George Berkeley became one of the most important British philosoph...

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Kilkenny College: State School, 2013

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In March 2013 Kilkenny College announced that it would no longer be charging tuition fees for all students, transferring effectively into the state-funded sector. Boarders and students taking part in extra-curricular activities still pay for those services, but the core schooling...

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