Any student of Kilkenny local history must wonder about the school at Nore View House and it’s whereabouts. Advertisements appeared in the local Press from 1840 publicising this school gave the name of its headmaster and owner who was Dr James St John B.A. T.C.D. L.LD.
The school was built for the purpose for which it was intended, having the river Nore to the front and playing fields at the rear. A later advertisement described it as the Feinaiglian School at Nore View, Kilkenny.
The question then arose as to where it was situated.? There were/ are many “Nore Views” in Kilkenny but none big enough for a school.
The dormitory was described as large enough to take twelve boarders.
Natives of Kilkenny were contacted whose ancestors attended the school and were listed as prize winners could not locate it either. Some years later a Mr. Dobbs sent on information to the Kilkenny Archaeological Society that by chance he was passing through the Library of the R.D.S. and a bust caught his attention because it represented a man called Gregory Von Feinaigle.
He got some information on Feinaigle and found that the latter had run a very successful school in Dublin from about 1811 to 1819, and had taught by “Mnemonics”.
Further research showed a Dublin location called Aldburgh House as having a school called Luxembourg and run by a Dr. Von Feinaigle.
It was good to know the kind of school a Feinaglian school was, but where was its location?
A Sherman of High Street (1839) directory of Carlow, Kilkenny, and Waterford was rumoured to have an illustration of both Nore View School and Kilkenny College.
This Directory was located in the National Library but sadly, though there was an advertisement for the School, the illustration had been removed.
Contact was made with Dr. F.S. Bourke a Kilkennyman and a member of the K.A.S if he had any information of the School or the Directory.
He sent on the Directory immediately and best of all it contained the illustration of the School.
The School occupied the premises of what is now the Home Rule Club situated on John Quay.
The exterior is exactly as it was in 1839 when T. Shearman issued the Directory. Permission was granted to visit, the rooms were well calculated to hold a school, and the much-vaunted room of the advertisement the Dormitory, 40 feet x 18 feet, is still the same as in its first day. On the top the five windows face the Nore and Kilkenny marble fire places were in every room and they and the cut stone doorway, all probably the work of Colles of Maddockstown.
On a visit to the club, the Kilkenny Archaeological Society found all traditions and traces of a school had disappeared. It was recalled by a local that the club was originally a school an intriguing and original kind of school, it was with its new fangled Feinaiglian methods.
Built so close to the river Nore as to terrify the parents (no wall then existed) yet there is no record of any accident.
The head master Dr. James St. John died in 1873, and a white marble slab to his memory is in the North West corner of St. Canices Cathedral.
The Old Commercial Club took over the premises in 1892, and in 1907 the Home Rule Club took over from the Commercial Club.
Until then from its inception the Home Rule Club had occupied the Arch House in Patrick Street, now no more.
The Home Rule Club is still in existence and celebrated it’s 125th anniversary. It is the only surviving such Club in Ireland
Source: Old Kilkenny Review 1958
