Arlington House

Arlington House, Portarlington

Arlington House was built in 1697 by Daniel Le Grand Du Petit Bosc on a piece of land known as Cruthley's Close.

Courtesy of Laois County Library

Arlington House, Portarlington
Courtesy of Laois County Library

Arlington House, Portarlington

Arlington House was built in 1697 by Daniel Le Grand Du Petit Bosc on a piece of land known as Cruthley's Close.

Courtesy of Laois County Library

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Arlington House was built in 1697 by one Daniel Le Grand Du Petit Bosc on a piece of land known as Cruthley's Close. The rear part of the house is the original building. The front section of the house was constructed around 1760 in what has become known as the Irish Georgian Style. It became a boarding school - "this school stands quite at the head of Irish Schools," was how Professor Mehaffey described it - and some of its most distinguished students included the Duke of Wellington and Edward Carson, the staunch Unionist who acted as prosecutor during the trial of Oscar Wilde, which led to his prison sentence and thus inspired the poem "The Ballad of Reading Gaol."
 

Also Fergus O'Connor, whose Uncle, Arthur, had been an active United Irishman, was a former student. In January 1815 O'Connor was expelled from school for trying to elope with the headmaster's daughter! Fergus O'Connor was to become one of the principal leaders of the Chartist movement in England.