History of a modern kind was made when Cullenswood House in Dublin's Ranelagh, the original home of Ireland's first bilingual school, founded by Patrick Pearse, was officially re-opened by Eamonn Eamon O Cuiv, Minister of State for the Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands, last Friday.
The lineage of associations with this imposing late-18th-century dwelling could be gauged by the mixture of relatives of the famous in attendance for the ceremonial unveiling of the magnificently restored building. Most prominent of these was Emer O Cuiv, the TD's mother and daughter of the late Eamon de Valera.
Pearse was represented by his great-grand-nephews, Coilin and Eoghan McLoughlin. Eileen McGuinness was there on behalf of Pearse's fellow leader in the 1916 Rising, Thomas MacDonagh, who was also a viceprincipal at the institution. Maire Colum, niece of Padraig, added a further air of poetic eloquence.
Amid continuing debate over funding for the Heritage Council and the criteria for listed buildings, residents in the Ranelagh area where the building is situated decided to take things into their own hands a decade ago when government neglect meant that the valuable structure had been let run into rack and ruin and was about to be demolished as unsafe.
"We had to stage a sit-down protest to literally prevent the bulldozers taking over," said Maire Davitt, PRO for Cumann Theach Fea Cuileann, the group of concerned citizens which rescued Cullenswood House from the limbo of the condemned. Pearse's sister, Margaret, passed the grounds over to the State in 1960.
Cullenswood House was bought for £370 by Pearse in 1908. For two years it served as a secondary boys' day and boarding school founded on Pearse's holistic view of education. When St Eanna's moved to Rathfarnham, Louise Gavan Duffy started a girls' version along similar lines here.
The background to Cullenswood House is enhanced by the fact that Scoil Bhride, the first Irish speaking school in the country which Gavan Duffy went on to establish a few years later in St Stephen's Green, is now on the same grounds as Pearse's initial project. Before Pearse's occupation, the house was the family home of renowned historian William Lecky.
Gerry Cahill, the architect involved in the restoration, stressed that they are at the "partial" stage. Only the ground floor is open to the public, where visitors are able to view memorabilia and the roll-call of Pearse's first schoolday.
Appropriately enough, Cullenswood House is to be used once again for educational purposes. For the next three years, the voices of the children attending a new gaelscoil, Lios na nOg, will charm the old walls.
