Belvedere College

History

The Society of Jesus was active in the area around Hardwicke Street since 1790. They founded St Francis Xavier's College in a disused convent on Hardwicke Street with nine students in 1832, three years after Catholic Emancipation, making it the second oldest Catholic college in Ireland for lay students (after Belvedere's sister college - Clongowes Wood College). In 1841, the Jesuits purchased Belvedere House (on neighbouring Great Denmark Street) which gave the College its name. George Augustus Rochfort (1738–1814), who became the Second Earl of Belvedere in 1774, built Belvedere House, whose interior decoration was carried out by Michael Stapleton, a leading stucco craftsman of his time.

The College was caught up in the events of the 1916 Rising, when the British military opened fire at the Jesuit residence. (The order subsequently received compensation for the damage). The Jesuits at Belvedere and the neighbouring Gardiner Street Community helped the wounded and distributed food across the locality.

A museum with an archive was opened in 2002, dedicated to the history of Belvedere and its past pupils.

Charitable activities

The school has a wide range of charitable activities for its students. For example, some students travel with the annual Dublin Diocesan Pilgrimage to Lourdes, France, to assist the elderly and the disabled. Others take part in an exchange programme with students of Saint Xavier's Collegiate School in Calcutta, India, where they assist in homes for orphans and street-children. Belvedere's St Vincent de Paul Society is among the largest among secondary schools in Ireland, organising activities such as old-folks events and flat decoration in inner city Dublin. Beginning in 1981, some students have undertaken a charity walk from Dublin to Galway each summer to raise funds for Irish Guide Dogs For The Blind, St Francis Hospice, and The Temple Street Children's Hospital (which is located near the school). The "block-pull", as it is known, has raised over €70,000 in a single event.

An annual charitable fundraising event held by the College is the "Belvedere Sleep-Out", which takes place from 22 to 24 December each year. Students "go homeless" on Dublin's O'Connell Street for 3 days and 2 nights. The Sleep-Out is run primarily by students from the College, with the assistance of a number of teachers and past pupils, to raise funds for Focus Ireland, The Home Again Society, and Father Peter McVerry's Society for homeless boys. The students fast for 24 hours during the Sleep-Out. The culmination is Christmas Eve midnight mass in the college chapel. In 2015, the event managed to raise over €189,000 over the Christmas period for the charities.

Belvedere College has an active alumni association – the Belvedere College Past Pupils' Union – the aim of which is to encourage interchange among Belvederians and to assist the needy in the local populace. The Union has a number of sub-committees including the Belvedere Youth Club, which provides social, recreational, and educational facilities for youth in the Dublin city centre area, and Belvedere Social Services, which provides housing for vulnerable homeless boys, assisting them with job training and employment. In 2010-11, Belvedere College Union established Belvedere alumni networks in the US and the UK to support past pupils abroad and to assist with fundraising projects for the college including the college's social integration scheme (S.I.S.).

Facilities

The college has many interactive white boards, 3 computer labs, cabled and wireless networking to every classroom, and many other IT features including dedicated networks for the library, special education, careers, music, and art. Other facilities include a swimming pool, gymnasium, modern restaurant, refectory, music suite, learning resource centre, museum, chapel, oratory, tennis courts, and rugby, cricket, and soccer pitches. The school also has a professional standard theatre, the O'Reilly Theatre, which is used to stage school plays and musicals but has also been used by RTÉ, TV3 and an assortment of dramatic organisations. In 2004, the college opened the Dargan Moloney Science and Technology Block, which boasts state-of-the-art laboratories, lecture theatres and IT hubs. Atop the Theatre and Science and Technology Block, sits a rooftop astro turf pitch which offers panoramic views of Dublin city and is mainly used for PE class as well as training for rugby and soccer teams. Directly across the courtyard, on the rooftop of the Kerr Wing is the running track; another example of innovative use of limited city centre space.

Sports

In October 2013 Belvedere held the all-Ireland schools senior track and field trophy having won the title for each of the previous seven years. They also hold numerous other titles at Leinster and West Leinster levels. Field sports are the traditional strength of the school.

Belvedere is the most successful cricket school in the province, having won 35 Leinster Senior Cricket Schools Cup titles.

Belvedere has a strong rugby union football tradition, being one of the traditional "Big Three", along with Blackrock College and Terenure College. In 2005, for the first time in the school's history, they won both the Leinster Junior Cup and Leinster Senior Cup.

Belvedere, with 11 titles, sit second in the Leinster Senior Cup roll of honour behind Blackrock College (68); their latest triumph coming on March 13, 2016, when Belvedere beat Cistercian College, Roscrea 31-7 at the RDS.

Other activities

The school has debating societies in the English, Irish, German, and French languages, with German debating experiencing something of a revival in autumn 2013. Belvedere has won the all-Ireland schools debating competition (2005 among other years), the Denny Leinster School's Senior Debating Championship in 2010, the L&H society Leinster Junior debating competition, and also the Alliance Française debating championship and Leinster Irish debating final.

Belvedere was successful in the last ever series of Blackboard Jungle, a popular television programme on RTÉ. The school's longstanding Concert Choir hosts the Annual Christmas Carol Service in December, and the Annual Musical Evening in May. The Choir have undertaken recordings in RTÉ, and has been successful at both the Feis Ceoil and the Wesley Feis. The College orchestra has won events at both the Wesley Feis and the Feis Ceoil.

Drama

Drama productions form an integral part of Belvedere's year. Each academic year, there are four performances: A Junior Musical, a Senior Musical, a Drama Society production, and a first year play. Productions have included Les Misérables (school edition) in 2004, and the stage adaptation of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials in 2007. Other productions of note include Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street, Bugsy Malone, The Adventures of Roderick Random, David Copperfield, Aladdin, Jesus Christ Superstar, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, The Wind In The Willows, Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Treasure Island, Lord of the Rings, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, the Addams family and the Pirates of Penzance.

Science

The promotion of Science has become a priority for Belvedere's Board of Management. Over €7 million has been invested in the Dargan-Maloney Science and Technology block. Dr Garret FitzGerald, an Old Belvederian and Senior faculty member at the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania in the United States, has instituted an annual, five-week scholarship for two students who excel in Transition Year science.

Culture of Belvedere

Belvedere College is run by the Jesuit order. Most of the school's teaching staff are lay-persons, although a number of Jesuit priests and brothers assist with administration and chaplaincy.

The school motto is Per Vias Rectas – "By Straight Paths" – and the College aspires to produce "Men for Others". Students often write "AMDG" for Ad maiorem Dei gloriam, "For the greater glory of God", the motto of the Society of Jesus, on the top left of pages of their copybooks. They formerly would also write "LDSetBVM" or Laus Deo Semper et Beatae Virgini Mariae ("Praise to God forever and to the Blessed Virgin Mary") on the bottom right of the same page.

The students are assigned to one of six different lines or houses, mainly named after Jesuits who were either famous or had an association with Belvedere: Loyola, Xavier, Aylmer, Kenny, and Scully. Years are named after the progression in the Jesuit Ratio Studiorum: Elements, Rudiments, Grammar, Syntax, Poetry, Rhetoric. Each form except Rhetoric has a captain and vice-captain.

The unofficial school anthem, often heard at rugby matches, is "Only In God", based on Psalm 62 in the Bible. The song was first sung at rugby matches during the 1995 and 1996 Senior Cup Campaigns. The official, less popular anthem, "Belvedere, Oh Belvedere", was composed by a past pupil and recorded by the school choir in 1997. The school's yearbook is The Belvederian. The term "Belvederian" is also sometimes used to refer to current students and "Old Belvederian" (OB) for alumni. Old Belvederians normally refer to their graduation by using OB followed by the final year in the college, for example, "OB 1984".

Belvedere College is the backdrop for much of James Joyce's novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It is a semi-autobiographical piece of work and the teacher, Mr Tate, was based on Joyce's own English teacher, George Dempsey. In the book Joyce mentions his involvement in the College Opera which continues today. The College's Dramatic Society performs four times during the academic year.

Notable past pupils

Alumni and teachers at the College played a major role in the creation of modern Irish literature (James Joyce, Austin Clarke, foundation of Ireland's National Theatre), the standardisation of the Irish language (de Bhaldraithe), as well as the Irish independence movement – both the 1916 Rising (Joseph Mary Plunkett, Éamon de Valera) and the Irish War of Independence (Éamon de Valera, Cathal Brugha, Kevin Barry). The College's notable alumni and former faculty include two Presidents of Ireland, three Taoisigh (Irish Prime Ministers), 1 Ceann Comhairle (Speaker of the Lower House of the Irish Parliament), several cabinet ministers, one Blessed, one Cardinal, one Archbishop, one signatory of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, one Supreme Court Justice, one Olympic medallist, twenty-eight Irish international rugby players and numerous notable figures in the world of the arts, academia and business, as detailed below.

Notable Faculty

of an Artist