User:John Stocks Powell/sandbox

Portarlington School, Co. Laois, Ireland 1840-1895. Portarlington School was founded by John Ambrose Wall (c.1802-1877) in Arlington House, Portarlington in 1840. This was a boys only boarding school and achieved fame in its day as an elite school, and for pupils who became important figures in their later lives, the most significant being Edward Henry Carson (1854-1931) the prosecuting counsel of Oscar Wilde and Ulster Unionist leader: also General Sir Bryan Mahon (1862-1930) Commander-in-Chief, Ireland 1916 and a senator in the Irish Free State; Arthur Rambaut (1859-1923) Astronomer Royal, Ireland; William Ridgeway (1858-1926) Professor of Antiquities at Cambridge University; Lieutenant-General Spring Robert Rice (1858-1929) creator of the 'Block-house system' in the South African War. This school prided itself on its establishment ethos, and while it was 'in' Portarlington, it was not 'of' Portarlington. Wall's son Francis Hewson Wall (1842-1920) succeeded his father as headmaster, extended the school, and with it, the sporting facilities and ethos of English public schools. In 1879 Professor Mahaffy from Trinity College Dublin made a visit as part of a Commission into endowed schools, and wrote that Portarlington school was "quite at the head of Irish schools". This was a qualified praise for certain aspects but was used later by the headmaster and other writers as a cover-all praise, out of context. In 1881, consequential of Wall's response to growing Irish nationalism, especially the Land League agitation, he sold his interest in the school, and moved with a number of his pupils to a new school in Westward Ho! north Devon, which did not succeed. Portarlington School in Portarlington diminished in pupil numbers under a number of headmasters, to close in 1895. The Santry or Charter School in north Co. Dublin took over the building, but closed terminally in 1912. A persistent local legend is that the Duke of Wellington went to school in Portarlington: he did not, but his older brothers did, not to Portarlington School however.

References: Newspaper advertisements

'Carson's School, Portarlington', by John Stocks Powell, 2018