Glenstal Abbey School
| Glenstal Abbey School | |
|---|---|
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| Location | |
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Murroe, County Limerick Republic of Ireland |
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| Information | |
| Type | Boys only, 7-day Full Boarding and Day Boarding (Mon-Sat) |
| Motto | PAX |
| Religious affiliation(s) | Roman Catholic |
| Established | 1932 |
| Headmaster | Fr. William Fennelly OSB |
| Number of students | c.200 |
| Website | http://www.glenstal.com |
Glenstal Abbey School is a fee-paying secondary school for boys, located on the grounds of Glenstal Abbey, in Murroe, County Limerick. It is run by monks of the Benedictine order. The school offers 7-day full boarding, as well as day boarding (Mon-Sat), and is regularly ranked amongst the top schools nationally, if not the top.
Glenstal is a Norman Revivalist Castle, designed by William Bardwell, an English architect and built by Sir Matthew Barrington in 1839. Sir Charles and Lady Barrington left Ireland permanently in 1925 and the castle and estate were purchased shortly after by a priest, Monsignor James Ryan, for the nominal sum of £2,000. Some months after the purchase, Msgr Ryan wrote to Celestine Golenvaux, the Abbot of the Benedictine monastery at Maredsous, and invited him to come to Ireland and set up a daughter house in Glenstal and by March 1927, the first two Belgian monks had arrived at Glenstal to establish the new house.
In September 1932, the monks opened a Secondary School with Fr Columba Skerret as Headmaster, and with an intake of just seven pupils. The first lay teacher of the school was Vincent Quirke, from Wexford.
Glenstal is south facing and has an excellent view of the Galtee Mountains. It is on an estate of around 500 acres (2.0 km2), of which some is farmland, forestry, games fields, lakes, gardens and school and monastery buildings.
The Abbey grounds contain a great variety of trees and flowers, mostly planted during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by the Barrington Family. There are also five artificial lakes, mostly stocked with trout and one of which pupils may swim in during the summer months.
The school is divided into three houses, Junior House, Inter House and Senior House. Each house has its own Housemaster. Each house has dormitories for the boys to sleep in, a common room with a television, the housemaster's office and a "Pantry" (a basic cooking area with a microwave, kettle and fridge). Junior House holds the first and second years, Inter House the third and fourth years and Senior House the fifth and sixth years. The dormitories range in size from two beds to about sixteen. The sixth years have their own rooms, which include a bed, wardrobe, desk and washbasin.
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Wikipedia