The History of St. Matthew's Schools in Irishtown

The History of St. Matthews' Schools in Irishtown

 By Trevor James

In the 18^th century there were no schools in the area, and children in poor areas like Ringsend and Irishtown would not have received any education. On July 4th 1824, Rev Hugh McNeile preached a sermon in St Matthew’s church in aid of funds for the erection of a school for the district on account its “uncivilised state, its crowded population, the gross ignorance and consequent vice and disorder of so many unemployed and untaught children and the utter impossibility of giving them any effectual instruction in morality or religion”.  A teacher was advertised for immediately and some lessons were begun but they had no permanent location.

 

In 1831, the National School system began in Ireland.  It was the first state system of elementary education in the English-speaking world. The intention was “to afford combined literary and moral, and separate religious instruction, to children of all persuasions, as far as possible, in the same school”.  The first St Matthew’s school was built in 1832, at a cost of £800, which was defrayed by subscription of the congregation.  The ground had been given by the Earl of Pembroke and the building, which was beside St Matthew’s Church, housed a day school, an infant school, a Sunday school, a widow’s alms house, a dispensary and a shop for supplying the poor with necessities at reduced prices.  These facilities were, as the chaplain explained, for the “improvement of this poorest and most populous part of the parish of Donnybrook, inhabited by the families of hundreds who are employed occasionally by the wealthier citizens of Dublin” and were open to persons of every religious persuasion.   They were initially financed almost entirely by collections at annual charity sermons in St Matthew’s.  The costs were substantial since they covered the running costs of the school, payment for the attending physician, as well as providing fuel, books, clothing for the children and medicines for the dispensary.   

 

This school continued for many years, but it wasn’t till 1904 that a separate schoolhouse for girls was built on the other side of the road (which is now the Irishtown Gospel Hall).  The site had been bought by the church and used as a playground for the boys’ school.  The architect was James Franklin Fuller who lived in Eglington Road and was the same architect that had been responsible for the rebuilding of the church twenty-five years earlier.

There were three classrooms, one large one with two smaller rooms off it.  Each classroom had a fireplace and the parish paid for the coal.  In the early years, there were three teachers and this later increased to four because of the large number of infants, who were both boys and girls. School started at 9.30 and ended at 2pm for infants and 4pm for older children.  The curriculum included reading, grammar, arithmetic, drawing, science, geography, history, sewing, knitting, singing and cookery for the 6^th class.

 

By 1944 the number of boys in the boys’ school had fallen to 44.  If it dropped below 40, the school would be closed so there was an appeal to parishioners to send their children there.  The school was also falling into poor repair and it is said that the children had to march around the edges of the upstairs room for fear of collapsing the floors.

 

By 1951 the numbers in the girl’s school had also fallen and the decision was taken to amalgamate the two schools. So, in September 1951, the boys’ school closed and the boys moved across the road to join the girls.   This arrangement was not very satisfactory and temporary partitions had to be erected to divide the single large classroom and plans for a new school building were set in motion. 

 

The new school opened in 1959 at Cranfield Place, which had originally been tennis courts for the parish.  It was originally a two teacher school but expanded when it merged with St Stephen’ NS, Northumberland Road, in 1969. A three classroom extension was added in 1985. Another extension was added in 2001 giving the school a new classroom, library, cloakrooms, kitchen and office.  The extension was officially opened on the 21st of June 2002 by Mr. Ruairi Quinn, the leader of the Labour Party, who was a local TD and whose children attended the school. The school continued to grow with further classrooms added and it is now a nine teacher school.

 

(c) The Evening Herald 1968 & 1971

The old school building at the top of Church Avenue was in later years burned down and eventually knocked down to widen the corner.

Londonbridge Road, The First Home of Shamrock Rovers, Hockey, Tennis, Rugby & Fontenoy GAA

 

Thousands of rugby and soccer fans walk by it on their way to the Aviva Stadium perhaps stopping to buy a hat or scarf from the sellers at the wall but few would have any idea of how complex, colourful and diverse the history of the Lansdowne Lawn Tennis Club has but here are just some of the highlights.

The Lansdowne LTC itself was founded by the well-known Dublin sportsman Henry Dunlop in 1875 and was then known as the All-Ireland Lawn Tennis Club, located in the Lansdowne Road rugby ground. It was in 1880 that the club was changed title to the Lansdowne Lawn Tennis Club. Lansdowne players were instrumental in the Irish invasion of Wimbledon in the 1890’s. Joshua Pim was the Wimbledon champion in 1893 and 1894 and with Frank Stoker (cousin of Bram Stoker the creator of Dracula) won the Doubles titles in 1890 and 1893.

In 1929, Lansdowne moved across the river from the grounds of Rugby Union to the grounds of the Irish Hockey Union and Three Rock Rovers. It was not until the early 1980’s, when “Three Rock Rovers” moved to Marley Grange, that Lansdowne LTC became an all year round club.

But lets go back to the beginning. Once the River Dodder had been tamed and banked, the open ground where the Tennis Club is today, became known as the Dodder Fields and was leased out by the Pembroke Estate, the landlords of the area. The first sport to be played at Londonbridge Road was rugby with the grounds being used as the home venue for Carmichael’s College. Carmichael College of Medicine was located on the corner of Whitefriars Street and Aungier Street in the building currently housing a Starbucks. In 1889, the College was incorporated into the Royal College of Surgeons. The grounds were used as a venue for a Hospital’s rugby competition.

In late 1884, a new lease holder for the Dodder Field was advertised for.

Another club to use the Londonbridge Road grounds was the local Claremont Club formed on the nearby Claremont Road in Sandymount.

But it was not just rugby that found a home by the Dodder. The Freeman’s Journal reported on December 3rd 1893 athletics were taking place on the ground with County Dublin Harriers using the venues including D.D. Bolger who would go on to be a British champion.

 

In the newspaper report it Athletics is referred to being held at ‘The St. Matthews Football Ground’. St Matthews was the Church of Ireland church located at the top of Londonbridge Road at the intersection with Irishtown Road and Tritonville Road.

It was then the turn of soccer to be played Mr. Bernard Leech who hosted that dinner lived at Number 7 Londonbridge Road and was a well known builder in the city.

In 1897 it was reported that a branch of the ’98 Club’ would be formed with its headquarters in the clubhouse on Londonbridge Road. These clubs formed all over Ireland were nationalist gatherings remembering the events of the 1798 Rebellion. The branch was dedicated to William Orr.

Orr was an Antrim born (1766) revolutionary and member of the United Irishmen. He was executed in 1797 in what was widely believed at the time to be "judicial murder" and whose memory led to the rallying cry “Remember Orr” during the subsequent 1798 Rebellion

The grounds were also regularly used by the British military regiments in Dublin for sporting competitions including rugby, soccer, archery and shooting competitions. The proximity to the Beggars Bush Barracks and the fact that the now Royal Chapel of St Matthews was the local church for the British forces in the area made Londonbridge Road an ideal venue. These military sporting events attracted large crowds both the military and their families and locals.

 

In 1899 another sport arrived with the Sandymount Cricket Club both practicing and playing one season at Londonbridge Road.  According to cricket historian and journalist Ger Siggins,

‘Monkstown CC played in Leinster league competitions from 1921 up to 1946, winning several trophies and competing in the Senior Cup in the early ’40s. It moved to Milltown Road, folding soon after. A revived club calling itself Monkstown played on the Irish Hockey Union grounds on Londonbridge Road from 1965-68.’

Meanwhile rugby continued to be played at Londonbridge Road.

In 1899 a new soccer club was formed in Ringsend and named themselves Shamrock Rovers. The Hoops went onto to be and continue to be one of Ireland’s most successful clubs but their first home matches were played at the Londonbridge Road venue. Their first recorded match away from home was against Linfield Swifts but not the Northern Ireland based team but a Linfield based in Clonskeagh who played their home games on Bird Avenue. Rovers would for many years later find their home at Glenmalure Park in Milltown before in the 1980’s becoming homeless, finding themselves playing at Tolka Park, Harold’s Cross greyhound stadium and the RDS before moving to their current home in Tallaght.

By 1901 other soccer clubs were using the Grounds as a home venue including junior league side Haddington FC from nearby Haddington Road and Alliance who were based in Ballsbridge.

Another sport graced the Londonbridge Road venue in 1901 when Gaelic games were played both hurling and football. Fontenoy’s GAA club was formed when the first meeting took place at 20 Bath Avenue on 7th October 1887, the name Fontenoy was proposed for the new club and adopted. Fontenoy was the scene of a battle on the 11th May 1745 and was part of the War of the Austrian Succession between the French on the one hand and the British and Dutch on the other. Numerous locals from Sandymount and Ringsend lost their lives in the battle. The current formation of the club as we know it today took place in 1968 with the amalgamation of Fontenoy (hurling) and Clanna Gael (football) which had been founded in 1929.  

In 1929 after numerous matches taking place at the venue, Londonbridge Road became the home to Three Rock Rover Hockey Club and as the premier international venue for the next fifty years. The project was almost singlehandedly spearheaded by Thomas Sydney Dagg.  According to the Irish Hockey website

‘He played on the Irish hockey team twice (1903, 1911) and after leaving TCD joined Three Rock Rovers, where he was captain and President of the club. Called to the bar in 1909, he became assistant principal officer in the Department of Finance in November 1923 and principal officer in November 1931. After his hockey-playing career was over, he became the only official of the Irish Hockey Union (IHU) to serve as President (1920–24, 1930–31), Honorary Secretary (1907–8), Honorary Match Secretary (1908–11), and Hon. Treasurer (1943–8). As an official he did more than any other individual to promote the game in Ireland and was responsible for the purchase of the IHU’s headquarters and grounds at Londonbridge Road and of the Leinster branch’s grounds at Templeogue. As a mark of gratitude for his service he was made the first patron of the IHU (1954).’

The first issue to be dealt with was the 44 allotments that had been given to locals since 1917 to grow their own produce. Londonbridge Road Irishtown 1917 1929 44 Hockey pitch and now tennis club. They had been there for 12 years and the Pembroke UDC had not acquired land under the 1926 Allotment Act, this meant an unusually large compensation package had to be paid to clear the allotments from the venue.

Once the ground had been renovated and a new club house built, a second sports body joined at the ground with the Lansdowne Road Lawn Tennis club moving from their home at Lansdowne Road to Londonbridge Road. Irish international hockey player Harry Cahill’s sister Irene Johnston was captain of the Irish women's hockey team and president of the Irish Ladies Hockey Union (1994–6); she and Harry shared the unique distinction of playing for victorious Irish teams, which beat Belgium, on the same day at the same venue (29 April 1973, Londonbridge Road, Dublin), this was Harry's last Irish appearance. 

Another sport to be found at Londonbridge Road in the 1930s was the female sport Lacrosse with tournament matches also played at Lansdowne Road.

Following their move to Rathfarham and the sale of the grounds in 1981, Londonbridge Road today it is the sole home of the Lansdowne Lawn Tennis Club and the area where the hockey pitch once stood is now the housing development Lansdowne Village but let us not forget the great sporting traditions that graced Londonbridge Road for almost one hundred and fifty years.

Bram 'Dracula' Stoker in Ringsend

It was come as a surprise to many readers and Ringsend natives that the man who brought the blood sucking vampire Count Dracula into the world, Bram Stoker, was a regular sight around the streets of Ringsend, perhaps even gaining inspiration.

  This is Bram in Ringsend.

 

According to Captain M P Leahy, who said that it was Bram Stoker who introduced him to rowing on the Liffey, remembered that when Stoker and his fellow boat club members rowed on the Liffey it,

‘was mostly in choppy waters with planks, dead rats and flotsam and jetsam of all kinds around them. The boats were frequently filled and almost frequently sank in the choppy seas on which they performed.’

Leahy who not only rowed for Trinity but was also a champion heavyweight boxer, went on to serve in the Royal Army Medical Corps, and was wounded on the Western Front in July 1915. Rowing by Trinity scholars on the River Dodder and the River Liffey dates back to the formation of the University Rowing Club which merged with the Pembroke Rowing Club, which itself had been founded in 1836, to form the Dublin University Rowing Club. There was then a split in the club and a new Dublin University Boat Club was formed. It was to this club that a young Abraham Stoker joined.

Bram Stoker, as he was better known, was born at 15 Marino Terrace Clontarf on November 8th 1847. His name, despite his other seventeen novels, would be forever linked to his gothic horror creation ‘Dracula’. Before his move to London with his new wife Florence Balcombe, a former sweetheart of another great writer Oscar Wilde. According to the Bram Stoker estate, Wilde "displayed his penchant for drama after their breakup, requesting she return a trinket while sending her flowers anonymously". In fact, Bram Stoker was a mourner at Oscar Wildes father, Sir William Wilde, funeral in 1876 funeral. He left a job in the Irish Civil Service at Dublin Castle to move to London and find a job as the manager of the Lyceum Theatre, Bram spent his childhood in Dublin, ending up in higher education at Trinity College.

Florence Balcombe

It was while at Trinity that Bram became a regular visitor to Ringsend. Despite being a sickly child, his sporting prowess came to the fore once he began life studying for his Bachelor of Arts at Trinity. He was successful on the athletics field, the gymnasium and then he joined the University rowing club which was based on the River Dodder.

Once he arrived in Ringsend, walking his way from his lodgings at 30 Kildare Street, he passed the newly built St. Patrick’s catholic church, down Thorncastle Street and to the slipways that would take them out onto the Liffey. He was trained by the legendary Tom Grant, who was highly regarded on the English rowing circuit at Hendley Regatta. The ‘Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle’ reported that the Junior paired race was held over a measured mile course on the Liffey on Saturday June 22nd 1867. A large crowd had gathered along the banks of the Liffey and in the first heat Bram Stoker and James Kennedy with cox William Cullinane winning easily from two other University crews in a times of eight minutes forty seconds. In the final between Kennedy and Stoker and Wright and Barrington with their cox Richards, it was closely contested. At two hundred yards Barrington’s boat was ahead but at the half mile it was Stoker’s boat that was a length in front but his opponent once again put on a spurt and took the lead eventually winning by a boat length. The race time for the mile was nine minutes ‘against a strong wind’.

Not only did Bram row in two man crews but also in four man crews. The Saunders Newsletter reported on October 15th 1867 that along with Stoker was fellow students George Atkins Jnr, John La Touche, Tom James and William Kennedy.

But it was not just the rowing itself that took Bram to Ringsend. He joined the University Boat Club Dramatic Society and performed several times on the stage at the Ringsend Club-house. On Friday May 13th 1870, the first performances were staged.

In March 1871 the newspapers described an ‘excellent Mr. Stoker’,

By early 1871 Bram was in the Ringsend Clubhouse being elected to the Dramatic Society Committee,

According to the Freemans Journal on April 12th 1871 under the headline, ‘The University Boast Club Dramatic Society’ they reported,

“The third performance this season of the above society took place last evening at the club-house, Ringsend. The attendance was large and fashionable. A handsome stage was erected in the principal apartment of the club, which was decorated for the occasion in a most suitable manner.  The pieces selected-were the comedy of The Apprentice, and the extravaganza of The Happy Man. In the first named the efforts of Mr. Stone as Wingate, and Mr. W. Henry as Dick, his son, wero rewarded by very general applause. Messrs. R. W. Andrews, A. Stoker and Adair were also most happy in their respective parts. Tho extravaganza passed of equally successful, Messrs. Do Burgh, W. Henry, and Stoker being entitled to deserved commendation for their excellent acting.”

The ’extravaganza of The Happy Man was written by fellow Dubliner Samuel Lover. Lover was born on Grafton Street, Dublin in 1797, the son of William and Abigail Lover. In 1826 he wrote his most famous piece the ‘Ballad of Rory O’More’. He was well known for his humorous political caricatures as well as his writings. He died in July 1868.

 In June Stoker was commended again in his performance on stage in Ringsend.

 

It was perhaps through his love of the dramatic stage that Stoker became a theatre critic for the Dublin University Magazine edited by Sheridan Le Fanu. Not only did Le Fanu edit the magazine but he also was the author of gothics tales and many scholars point to his work ‘Carmilla’ a vampire inspired novella published in 1872 as a precursor to Stoker’s Dracula which was first published in 1897. Stoker’s Dracula, after Sherlock Holmes, is one of the most portrayed fictional character on film, radio (Orson Wells being the first man to bring Dracula to the radio), television, books and animation.

According to some sources Le Fanu's work has been noted as an influence on Bram Stoker's Dracula noting that,

1.     Both stories are told in the first person. Dracula expands on the idea of a first person account by creating a series of journal entries and logs of different persons.

2.     Both authors indulge the air of mystery, though Stoker takes it further than Le Fanu by allowing the characters to solve the enigma of the vampire along with the reader.

3.     The descriptions of the title character in Carmilla and of Lucy in Dracula are similar. Additionally, both women sleepwalk.

4.     Stoker's Dr. Van Helsing is similar to Le Fanu's vampire expert Baron Vordenburg: both characters investigate and catalyse actions in opposition to the vampire.

5.     Both the titular antagonists - Carmilla and Dracula, respectively, pretend to be the descendants of much older nobles bearing the same names, but are eventually revealed to have the same identities. However, with Dracula, this is left ambiguous. Although it is stated by Van Helsing (a character with a slightly-awkward grasp of the English language) that he "must, indeed, have been that Voivode Dracula who won his name against the Turk, over the great river on the very frontier of Turkey-land", the next statement begins with "If it be so", thereby leaving a thin margin of ambiguity.

6.     "Dracula’s Guest", a short story by Stoker believed to have been a deleted prologue to Dracula, is also set in Styria, where an unnamed Englishman takes shelter in a mausoleum from a storm. There, he meets a female vampire, named Countess Dolingen von Gratz.

 

There is scholarly speculation that Bram’s quest to write about the undead came from his mother who told him stories of Cholera outbreaks in Sligo and how to stem the spread of the disease some people were buried alive. This may have come back into focus as during the years he was both rowing and acting on stage in Ringsend, the area was decimated by a cholera outbreak and no doubt he would have passed many funerals coming and going at St. Patrick’s Church. Another influence was the fact that Bram, whose acting debut came in Ringsend, and no doubt that helped him become a theatre critic where one of his visits may have been to the Queen’s Theatre on Pearse Street (then known as Great Brunswick Street) where a play ‘Ruthven The Vampire’ was performed to packed houses in 1866 and 1867.

The next time you are walking over the bridge and down Thorncastle Street and a shiver goes down your back, watch out for low flying bats.

Sources

The Bram Stoker Estate & Darce Stoker

The Irish Newspaper Archives

The Dublin University Boast Club Archives

The Irish National Archives

Trinity College

Ancestry.com

British Newspaper Archives

US Library of Congress

RTE Archives