Rathdown School, Glenageary, Co. Dublin, is an amalgamation of four schools, one of which was Hillcourt, founded in May 1919. In the academic year 2019-2020, Rathdown has been celebrating 100 years of education on its Glenageary campus. This campus formed the grounds of the original Hillcourt, and the beautiful, double-bow-fronted 19th century Hillcourt House is still used as a boarding house today.

 

In November 2019 the Rathdown School Alumni Association curated an exhibition from the school's extensive archive, displayed at the DLR Lexicon, and an interactive storymap of the constituent schools, Roads to Rathdown. While Rathdown is temporarily closed as a result of government restrictions imposed as a response to the Covid19 crisis, the Alumni Association has put together this online exhibition of the Kathleen Johnson Collection, a photographic archive depicting various aspects of school life during Hillcourt’s first academic year, 1919-1920.

It is sobering to remember, as we launch this online exhibition in May 2020, that when Hillcourt opened in May 1919, the country was still in the grip of an influenza epidemic that, in Ireland alone, infected 800,000 people and claimed 23,000 lives in a 12-month period.