The mural is commissioned to celebrate 200 years of Whitechurch National School and is funded by the Arts Council’s Creative Schools Initiative.
During the Bronze Age there was a Ring Fort called Ráth Fearnáin or Fearnán’s ringfort in the foothills of the Dublin mountains. This was a circular earthwork enclosure protecting the household of the Chieftain Fearnán. There would have been a number of houses inside. After the coming of Christianity, the Vikings invaded Dublin and eventually settled in the Dublin hinterland. There are Viking grave slabs in the ruins of the small white 12th century church which gave the area its name.
After the Norman invasion of Ireland, Milo le Bret built a fortified settlement on the site of today’s Rathfarnham Castle and a village grew up around the ford over the River Dodder. The La Touche family, a Huguenot merchant dynasty, constructed Marlay House. In the 18th and 19th centuries Rathfarnham became a hub of industry where many water mills produced paper. The original one-room school was built in pre-famine times in 1823 and is still to be seen beside the Church of Ireland Parish Church built in 1827. The new school building constructed in 1990 is further down the road and the mural is situated beside the outside classroom.
