Series 5 - Records relating to the Seraphic School (later St. Francis College), Rochestown

Files and items; manuscript and typescript

St. Francis College, Rochestown was founded in 1884 by the Capuchin Franciscan Order as a Seraphic School, an institution initially dedicated to cultivating religious vocations for the order. Deeply intertwined with the history of the adjacent Rochestown Friary, the college functioned for nearly a century as a boarding school before transitioning into a voluntary all-boys day school (known as St. Francis College) during the 1970s in response to the introduction of free state secondary education. By the mid-1980s, St. Francis College had fully completed its transition away from a boarding structure into a dedicated day-pupil model.

The documents in this series chronicle the college’s structural evolution from an isolated training novitiate into a major regional secondary institution, highlighting its administration by both the Capuchin friars and lay leadership, infrastructural developments along Monastery Road, and its long-standing academic, cultural, and sporting legacies.