The Royal Hibernian Military School was founded in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, Ireland in 1769, to educate orphaned children of members of the British armed forces in Ireland.
In 1922 the Royal Hibernian Military School moved to Shorncliffe, in Folkestone, Kent, and in 1924 it was merged with the Duke of York's Royal Military School which, by then, was in its current location atop 'Lone Tree Hill' above Dover Castle.
The foundation of the School came about in 1769 when King George III granted a Charter of Incorporation on 15 July, the School Governors holding their inaugural meeting on 6 November in Dublin Castle. [1]
The buildings housing the school were erected in 1771 in the Phoenix Park, overlooking the village of Chapelizod in the Liffey valley (in full view of the Wicklow mountains). The chapel was designed by Thomas Cooley, while thirty years later Francis Johnston designed the extensions to the buildings. It first took in 90 boys and 50 girls as pupils (in the charge of an Inspector and Inspectress, assisted by the Chaplain and an assistant mistress) in March 1770. The site originally occupied 3 acres (12,000 m2) but by 1922 its boundary walls enclosed thirty three acres.
By 1808 the system and organisation of the school followed closely that of its sister school, the Duke of York's Royal Military School (then at Chelsea, London, England). By 1816, when Thomas Le Fanu (father of Sheridan Le Fanu) took over as chaplain, there were 600 children at the school.
In 1853 the school's first "stand of colours" were presented by the then Prince of Wales and, in the same year, the girls at the school left to join their own separate establishment, the Drummond School, which was founded for them at Chapelizod.
The school acted as a feeder to the British Army, where In the mid-19th century, children as young as 12 could enlist in the Army but generally enlistment began at 14. By the 1900s 50 per cent of pupils were going straight into the army. By this stage the school was not only an orphanage; for instance, the Army Non-Commissioned Officer father of Liam Mellows entered him there to get a good basic military training which he hoped would lead to an army career, instead it was used during the Easter Rising and the Irish War of Independence, both in fighting and in training the flying columns in guerrilla warfare. [2]
Many of the school's pupils carried acts of gallantry in the wars that the British Army was involved in. One such individual was Frederick Jeremiah Edwards who was awarded the Victoria Cross for extraordinary bravery in the First World War. [3]
In 1922 the Royal Hibernian Military School moved to Shorncliffe, in Folkestone, Kent, and in 1924 it was merged with the Duke of York's Royal Military School which by then was in its current location atop 'Lone Tree Hill' above Dover Castle.
A stained glass window depicting a saluting boy soldier is sited above the 'minstrel gallery' type balcony of the Duke of York's School Chapel in Dover, and commemorates the merging of the schools. [4]
Many of the school's original buildings remain and form a large part of St Mary's Hospital, [5] Phoenix Park. A war memorial to those pupils that were killed in World War 1, [6] the school's graveyard and protestant chapel also remain; [7] [8] the Roman Catholic chapel was demolished as the hospital site was developed.
Members of the school were instrumental in forming Bohemian F.C. in 1890. [9]
Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu was an Irish writer of Gothic tales, mystery novels, and horror fiction. He was a leading ghost story writer of his time, central to the development of the genre in the Victorian era. M. R. James described Le Fanu as "absolutely in the first rank as a writer of ghost stories". Three of his best-known works are the locked-room mystery Uncle Silas, the lesbian vampire novella Carmilla, and the historical novel The House by the Churchyard.
The Phoenix Park is a large urban park in Dublin, Ireland, lying 2–4 kilometres (1.2–2.5 mi) west of the city centre, north of the River Liffey. Its 11 kilometres (6.8 mi) perimeter wall encloses 707 hectares of recreational space. It includes large areas of grassland and tree-lined avenues, and since the 17th century has been home to a herd of wild fallow deer. The Irish Government is lobbying UNESCO to have the park designated as a World Heritage Site.
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Prince Arthur of Connaught was a British military officer and a grandson of Queen Victoria. He served as Governor-General of the Union of South Africa from 20 November 1920 to 21 January 1924.
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Ballyfermot is a suburb of Dublin, Ireland. It is located seven kilometres west of the city centre, south of Phoenix Park. It is bordered by Chapelizod on the north, by Bluebell on the south, by Inchicore on the east, and by Palmerstown and Clondalkin on the west. The River Liffey lies to the north, and the Grand Canal, now a recreational waterway, lies to the south of Ballyfermot. Ballyfermont lies within the postal district Dublin 10. Cherry Orchard, which is also a suburb, is sometimes considered to be within Ballyfermot.
III Corps was an army corps of the British Army formed in both the First World War and the Second World War.
The Duke of York's Royal Military School, more commonly known as the Duke of York's, is a co-educational academy with military traditions in Guston, Kent. Since becoming an academy in 2010, the school is now sponsored by the Ministry of Defence, and accepts applications from any student wishing to board. Before 2010, only those students whose parents were serving or had served in the armed forces were eligible.
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Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Charles Rowan was an officer in the British Army, serving in the Peninsular War and Waterloo and the joint first Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, head of the London Metropolitan Police.
Chapelizod is a village preserved within the city of Dublin, Ireland. It lies in the wooded valley of the River Liffey, near the Strawberry Beds and the Phoenix Park. The village is associated with Iseult of Ireland and the location of Iseult's chapel. Chapelizod is under the administration of Dublin City Council.
Thomas Cooley (1740–1784) was an English-born Irish architect who came to Dublin from London after winning a competition for the design of Dublin's Royal Exchange in 1768.
Sir William Robinson PC(I) was a British architect, military engineer and politician. He held several posts in the Dublin Castle administration, including as Surveyor General of Ireland from 1671 until 1700. He was an influential figure in the development of classical architecture in Ireland, designing many buildings in the English Baroque-style, particularly in Dublin.
Charles Stewart Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 6th Marquess of Londonderry,, styled Viscount Castlereagh between 1872 and 1884, was a British Conservative politician, landowner and benefactor, who served in various capacities in the Conservative administrations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. After succeeding his father in the marquessate in 1884, he was Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland between 1886 and 1889. He later held office as Postmaster General between 1900 and 1902 and as President of the Board of Education between 1902 and 1905. A supporter of the Protestant causes in Ulster, he was an opponent of Irish Home Rule and one of the instigators of the formal alliance between the Conservative Party and the Liberal Unionists in 1893.
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St Mary's Hospital in the Phoenix Park, Dublin offers stroke rehabilitation to patients of all ages, provides inpatient rehabilitation to older population and provides residential care to older persons. It's a multidisciplinary community hospital. It also provides outpatient services via the Day hospital.
The Royal Military Infirmary (RMI) in Dublin was located at the southeastern edge of Phoenix Park, one of several former British military installations in the area. The hospital buildings are now part of the Irish Department of Defence's estate and currently houses Ireland's Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. The bulk of the British Army's medical services in Dublin were transferred from the RMI to a new hospital at Arbour Hill in Dublin in 1913. The Infirmary buildings are protected as they are nationally significant architecture.
This is the site of choice for histories of the Duke of York's and Hibernian military schools, opposing views on 19th Century Army education, dedicated military history, and journalism of interest.
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