| Type: | Voluntary Grammar |
| The Royal School | |
| Location: | College Hill, Armagh BT61 9DH, Northern Ireland |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Religion: | Church of Ireland |
| Head Label: | Headmaster |
| Gender: | Coeducational |
The Royal School, Armagh is a co-educational voluntary grammar school, founded in the 17th century, in the city of Armagh in Northern Ireland. It has a boarding department with an international intake. It is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference.[1]
One of a number of free schools created in 1608 by King James I of England & Ireland, the school was to educate the sons of local Protestant merchants and farmers during the plantation of Ulster. It has four "sister" schools: Royal School Dungannon in Dungannon, Enniskillen Royal Grammar School in Enniskillen, the Royal School Cavan in Cavan, and the Royal and Prior School in Raphoe. In November 2013 the school was placed 78th in The Sunday Times Top 200 UK Schools Guide for results at A level and GCSE combined. In May 2014, an inspection by the Education and Training Inspectorate found the leadership and management of the school to be 'outstanding'.
Originally intended to be sited at Mountnorris, the turbulent situation in Ulster at the time led to a move to the relative safety of Armagh city. Despite this, an early headmaster of the school, John Starkey, and his family, were drowned by insurgents during the 1641 Rebellion.[2] The school arrived at its current 27acres site on College Hill in the 1770s.[3] A boys' school from its inception, the school was amalgamated with Armagh Girls' High School in 1986 to become co-educational.[4]
Each pupil is assigned to a house – Darcy, Rokeby, Beresford or Armstrong – which are named after former Church of Ireland archbishops. Successive archbishops have chaired the board of governors for over four centuries. In 2008, the school celebrated its quatercentenary along with the four other 1608 Royal Schools. To mark the occasion, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, visited the school. A history of the 1608 Royal Schools was produced in the same year by former headmaster, Thomas Duncan.
The school was the inaugural winner of the rugby union Ulster Schools Cup, beating Royal Belfast Academical Institution after three replays. They won it again the next year and continued to dominate the early years of the competition, winning it seven times in the first ten years. Fortunes waned after this, with only three finals contested between the victories in 1885 and 1977, none of which was won by the school. However, the school did not compete in the competition for around fifty years following the death of a pupil during a match in 1928.
The school won the Schools Cup in 2004, beating Campbell College in the final.[5] John McCall, the captain of that team, died 10 days after the final while playing for the Ireland U19 rugby team in the IRB U19 World Championship in South Africa.[6] He had been told of his selection for this team on the day of the Schools Cup final. A few months later, a second member of the squad, Todd Graham, was killed in a road accident while visiting his parents at their home in Zambia.[7] These tragedies brought perspective to what had been an otherwise successful year, with the school becoming the first school since Methodist College Belfast in 1936 – and only the second school ever – simultaneously to hold the schools cups for rugby and girls' hockey. The cricket 1st XI were beaten semi-finalists in their equivalent competition. The girls' hockey team won the Kate Russell all-Ireland hockey trophy on the day that John McCall died.
The girls' hockey team won the Schools Cup in 2002, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2010, 2023 and were beaten finalists in 2005. They also obtained the title of the best youth hockey team in Europe in 2008. In 2004/2005, the school was described in The Irish Times as the "girls hockey school of the decade".
The Old Armachians is a social organisation consisting of former pupils of the Royal School. Although at one time the Royal School educated politicians and novelists, its most recent notable exports have been rugby players.