Reading, Rithmetic and Rock ‘n Roll – that’s the three Rs you learn at a progressive school in New York City, right? Wrong, that’s what you learn at Ireland’s last boarding prep school, Headfort in Co Meath.
Headfort was distinctly unglamorous in the 1960s. It had more than a whiff of Llanabba, Dr Fagan’s prep school in Wales invented by Evelyn Waugh in Decline and Fall. If you want to see what Headfort is like now watch Neasa Ní Chianáin and David Rane’s 2016 documentary, School Life. It was shown at Sundance – that’s an even higher cinematographic honour than being molested by Harvey Weinstein – and it’s on now at Curzon Bloomsbury.
Curzon Bloomsbury specialises in showing documentaries in its Doc House screening room. For years I thought it was Dog House and admired such candour. Sometimes I have to do things for you, dear reader, but when I do Robert puts on one of his pained looks; it combines embarrassment, exasperation and more than a touch of annoyance. I interviewed the audience before the film started, asking them “ did you go to Headfort”.
First (male) viewer: “Gosh, no, but I wish I had. I was at school in Toronto.”
Second (female) viewer: “What’s Headfort?” Me: “It’s the boarding school this film is about.” Her: “I was at school in Australia. I sent my boys to Geelong.”
Third (male) viewer: “No.”
So you can see that it was a niche screening. I’m sorry that it is unlikely to be on at a multiplex near you because it was the best film I have seen this year. It is touching, charming, funny and wry. I laughed and cried for 100 minutes. Headfort has completely changed. There are pupils from Korea, Russia, Spain, France and Italy. It charts an academic year through the eyes of a married couple who have taught at the school for fifty years and are on the brink of retirement. (They taught the Headmaster.)
She teaches English and directs the school play. He teaches Latin and manages the school rock band. They have some good lines but the pupils of course often steal the show. Like The History Boys they get their Common Entrance results and, at least for me, there was a surprise. Enjoy the trailer.
Usually I follow in your footsteps. For once you seem to have followed in mine. I at last went to Carlyle’s house this spring. It was a fine time capsule. One absorbed its relationship (in his time) to the nearby countryside (some vignette about his dairy supplies, I half recall) and the soundproof study he had built to withstand the raucous jollities of the nearby pleasure gardens. And its presentation was beautifully relaxed, ditsy even.
I suppose Carlyle is hard reading now. But he comes alive in Eric Heffer’s biography; quite as much as does Enoch Powell, another awkward figure, in the other great Heffer life. Carlyle’s account of Great Man (and General Will) bendy reality history and politics – his Nietzscheanism – is easily seen as unattractive: Fascist in one view, weirdly Post Modern in another. But a great mind for all that, and a figure to conjure with. He and his home were objects of tourist curiosity pretty well from the start, and certainly while he lived there, and – wonderfully – continuously since.
As an occasional lurker on your always stimulating blog I am very grateful that my last visit coincided with your recommendation of School Life. I was just in time to pick up the last showing at Curzon Bloomsbury tonight. Another alumnus of Headfort told me about it earlier this year but I had forgotten. Enchanting, amusing and heartwarming.
The post-showing reaction of one of the 40ish couple behind me was a slightly dismissive “They’re all West Brits”, the first time I’ve heard that term for ages but inaccurate given the international element in the pupils, which you remark.
You may know that the Irish Georgian Society London (which I help run) raised a considerable sum of money to help restore the Adam plasterwork at Headfort in 2008, so it was good to see those rooms being appropriately used, not for art classes etc!
I’m glad you enjoyed the fillum, as we say in Ireland, and good to hear from an old boy. My nephew went but I was at CP. Rather amazing that Headfort is the last boarding school, there were so many in the 1960s.
The only redeeming architectural feature of Headfort is the fine Adam plaster work which the previous contributor has mentioned. Otherwise the facade looms heavy on the landscape, reminiscent of a hospital/gaol/workhouse or other drab Irish institution.