Luxembourg College. I was reading some posts on a research site a few days ago where a person was looking for info on a school in Dublin, the scrawled name on the paper was a bit hard to make out, but after a few suggestions a very sharp/clever person came up with the answer, the name of the school/college was the Feingaglian School and it was located in Aldborough House on Portland row, just beyond the Junction of Amiens St and the North strand road. The school in the early decade of the 1800s was by no means your ordinary run of the mill college, for starters the circumstances of how it became a learning centre is a story in itself. In the 700s Edward Stratford was the Earl of Stratford and Viscount Amiens..(Amiens st named after him)..Edward decided to build a mansion for his wife, the house cost £40,000 in 1796, and after Leinster House it was the last of the great townhouses built in the city. So its takes several years to complete and when the Earls wife decided that it wasnt for her as it was too close to the wetlands,the great mansion was doomed to lie idle for years..(the sea/mudlands were nearby at the time) The Earl died in 1801, his wife moved back to England, then in 1812 a Professor from Luxembourg decided to aquire the building for his Luxembourg College The pupils of this college would be a breed apart, No schoolbooks, no Blackboards or Chalkdust..the tool he would use was the brain, and in particular the function of using a persons Memory to educate. Every subject would be taught using Von-Feinagles system, and it was so successful that the College turned out scholars year after year during its existence. Von-Feinagle died in 1819,pity to say that the school then closed and the building lay idle again until the British army took it over as a staging depot to send troops to the docks and then shipped off to the Crimea. Today the Building is deserted and in Nama, I read recently that the area around nearby Muntjoy SQ is to be devoloped and brought back to its Georgian splendour, I thought it a pity that this great building with its age and history could not be afforded the same respect and included in the project.
Posted on: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 13:32:28 +0000
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