When I was at school, if one wanted to be alone, - which was not so much for solitude as to read undisturbed Forever Amber, a book considered by the authorities to be likely to corrupt our tender minds - one locked oneself in the lavatory until matron threatened sundry punishments through the keyhole.
How things have changed! In the new building at Kilkenny College, opened officially on September 21st by Minister for Education Mary Hanafin, there is, besides up-to-date classrooms and laboratories, a quiet room for student reflection.
The building is named after the college's most distinguished past pupil, Jonathan Swift, who was a student here from the age of six until he went to Trinity. His memories of his schooldays are mixed - "the confinement for ten hours a day to nouns and verbs, the terror of the rod, the bloody nose and broken shins but also the delicious holidays, the Saturday afternoons, and the charming custards in a blind alley".
It must have been during the delicious holidays that two events recalled by him in anecdotes took place: "I remember when I was a little boy, I felt a great fish at the end of my line which I drew almost to the ground. But it dropped in and the disappointment vexeth me to this very day and I believe was type of all my future disappointments." The other anecdote recounts that, for the momentary glory of riding his own horse through Kilkenny, Swift spent all his money on a nag on its way to the slaughter house. Alas the poor horse soon succumbed.
Kilkenny College was founded in or around 1667 by the Great Duke of Ormonde on land on the other side of the river from the castle. Only the hooded mouldings of the doorways remain of the original house which fronted on to John Street - "a grey, reverend pile of irregular and rather struggling design. The entrance to the schoolroom was from the street through huge, oak folding doors gained by two grand flights of steps on each side that formed a generous platform before the entrance. There were gothic windows, gables, chimneys and spouts which jetted into the street to the annoyance of the passers-by in rainy weather, while from the platform before the schoolroom entrance, lads of the college contrived further aggravations."
In 1689, the 2nd Duke of Ormonde and the masters of the school were attainted for high treason by James II, who then endowed the school as a university with a rector, eight professors and two scholars. But the new foundation was only three months old when the Battle of the Boyne was lost and with it all the aspirations of a university. It returned to being a school.
In 1782, a square three-storey building with a plain classical facade was put up to re-house the school. Homan Potterton, who became director of the National Gallery, writes in his autobiography, Rathcormick: "I came to realize that it was beautiful"; he goes on to describe the elaborate fanlight as "a frilly trollop flaunting herself above the hall-door".
In 1973 the college merged with the Collegiate Girls' School of Celbridge and moved to Newtown, a house on the edge of Kilkenny city. The Georgian house on the banks of the Nore was taken over by the county council.
When founding the college, the Duke of Ormonde wished the boys instructed in religion, virtue, learning in the Latin, Greek and Hebrew languages, and also in oratory and poetry. Children with contagious diseases were to be sent home and those who damaged school property or rebelled against authority were to be restored only after "exemplary discipline". The school day was to begin at six o'clock and to go on until eleven, and then to resume in the afternoon from one o'clock to five o'clock. Pupils were to have half days on Thursdays and Saturdays.
Up to the end of the 18th century, both the nobility and the citizens of the town educated their sons at the college. Kilkenny citizens paid only half fees. Thus future dukes and lords mixed with future weavers, saddlers and merchants; and, of course, boys who went on to study law, or medicine or join the army.
William Magee, who became Archbishop of York, was at school here in 1833. Like Swift he suffered a disappointment. His faith in the kindness of others was shattered when a big boy came up to him holding a fruit tart: "New boy, do you like tart?" "Oh very much." said little Magee. "Then," said the other, "Look at me eating one."
A more exotic picture of the college appears in Fetches, by the Kilkenny novelist John Banim. Tresham, an 18-year-pld student, enrols in the college in order to brush up on the classics, but he also dabbles in Rosicrucianism, a legendary and mystical fraternity involving the occult. His cupboard is piled with skulls and loose bones which he studies during his leisure.
Though we are told he is a devoted student of the classics, this it doesn't seem to take up much of his time after he falls in love. He and his sweetheart wander in the college shrubbery, in spite of meeting a tall black figure topped by a fiery, red face of severe expression with eyes that flash and a mouth that leers. The story ends tragically with Tresham dying in his lover's arms as she meets a watery death.