Drogheda Grammar School

File:Mr. Clarke's Free School, Laurence St., Drogheda - geograph.org.uk - 1055808.jpg

Drogheda Grammar School was founded under Royal Charter in 1669 by Erasmus Smith and is one of the oldest secondary schools in Ireland. It was originally a boys’ boarding school but has now been a co-educational boarding and day school for over fifty years. {{when|date=May 2020}}

It is owned by a company with charitable status called Drogheda Grammar School Ltd. This structure was set up in the early 1950s when a group of local people (mostly Quakers) saved the school from closure. Although the school is not a Quaker school, it is run under the Quaker principle of "every individual is of value and has something to contribute".{{fact|date=October 2024}}

The school's campus, located just outside Drogheda, consists of a Regency house flanked by woodland, with classroom and dormitory buildings and playing fields.{{citation needed|date=May 2020}}

As of 2020, statistics which outlined the top feeder schools for third-level education placed Drogheda Grammar School as one of the top schools in the area, with 100% of its students progressing to 3rd level education in 2020.{{fact|date=October 2024}} These results were republished in the Irish Times and Irish Independent.{{cite web |url = http://www.droghedagrammarschool.ie/drogheda-grammar-school-named-no-1-school-louth/ |website = droghedagrammarschool.ie |title = Drogheda Grammar School is the top school in Louth |access-date = 17 December 2016 |archive-date = 20 December 2016 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20161220151249/http://www.droghedagrammarschool.ie/drogheda-grammar-school-named-no-1-school-louth/ |url-status = dead }}{{update inline|date=May 2020}}

Drogheda Grammar School is located on 18 acres in a rural setting off of Mornington Road, Drogheda, County Louth. The original building on its current campus was owned by Chief Justice Henry Singleton.{{Cite web|url=http://sources.nli.ie/Record/PS_UR_032756|title=Holdings: Some notes on the buildings of Drogheda Grammar School...|website=sources.nli.ie|access-date=2016-12-01}} The school opened a new building in 2012. This building includes a library/writing centre, technology workshop, DCG room, and a Home Economics room. There is a small reflection room which has a stained glass window originally made in contribution to the memory of a student who died in 1942 by Harry Clarke Stained Glass Studio in the 1940s and was in storage since 1976 after the school was moved from Lawrence Street. The school has six tennis courts, five playing pitches, a large gymnasium, and an AstroTurf pitch.{{Cite web|url=http://www.droghedagrammarschool.ie/school-history/|title=School History - Drogheda Grammar School|website=droghedagrammarschool.ie|access-date=2016-12-01}}

The school participates in several team sports including hockey, rugby, football, basketball and netball.

The main sport is rugby however the hockey teams have won multiple Leinster and all Ireland titles, most recently in 2018. The schools football team has also won North-East and Leinster titles, most recently in 2022

{{citation needed|date=May 2020}} The school also has a chess team and has won a number of local and all-Ireland competitions. {{citation needed|date=May 2020}}

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{{See also|Category: People educated at Drogheda Grammar School}}

• Balthazar Foster, 1st Baron Ilkeston (physician and Liberal MP)
• Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (soldier and Prime Minister)
• Jackson Lawlor (Anglican priest and writer)
• Edward Moore (Bishop of Kilmore, Elphin and Ardagh)
• Sir Henry Cuthbert (lawyer and politician in Australia)
• Henry Grattan (politician)
• Henry Flood (politician)
• Robert Adrain (United Irishman and politician)
• John Cunningham (poet, dramatist and actor)
• Richard Lovell Edgeworth (politician, writer and inventor)
• John Edward Healy (longest serving editor of the Irish Times)
• Derek Landy (author and screenwriter)
• John Robert Leslie (Irish academic)
• Jill Meagher (Irish Australian homicide victim)
• Henry Singleton (Chief Justice of Ireland)
• George Forbes ( 3rd Earl of Granard and royal navy commander)
• John Kells Ingram (Irish mathematician, economist and writer)
• Deirdre Gogarty (Irish boxer)
• Courtney Love (American musician)
• Jonathan Kelly (Irish folk/rock singer and musician)
• Alexander Williams (1846–1930, Irish painter, singer and taxidermist){{Cite web

|last=Baker|first=Audrey|date=2009|title=Williams, Alexander|url=https://dib.cambridge.org/viewReadPage.do?articleId=a9046|access-date=2021-01-19|website=Dictionary of Irish Biography - Cambridge University Press

}}

{{Reflist}}

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• [http://www.droghedagrammarschool.ie/ Drogheda Grammar School website]

{{Private schools in the Republic of Ireland}}

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Category:1669 establishments in the British Empire

Category:Boarding schools in Ireland

Category:Educational institutions established in the 1660s

Category:Private schools in the Republic of Ireland

Category:Schools in Drogheda

Category:Schools with a royal charter

Category:Secondary schools in County Louth