Founding . The building was constructed between 1669 and 1673 and was demolished around 1772. The school was founded in 1669 as The Hospital and Free School of King Charles II and was located in
Queen Street, Dublin. King's Hospital was a continuation of the old Free School of Dublin. On 5 May 1674, the school opened with 60 pupils, including 3 girls. During the early seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, it was used as the site of elections to the
Irish Parliament's
Dublin City constituency. When this was changed to the
Tholsel for the 1713
general election, it led to the
Dublin election riot.
New building of 1783 From 1783 to 1971, the school was located in
Blackhall Place, Dublin, later the headquarters of the
Law Society of Ireland in a building and amongst a street plan that was designed by the architect
Thomas Ivory and encompassed much of what was previously the land of Oxmantown Green. The take-over of Morgan's School (1957) contributed to steadily increasing numbers of students, and by 1970, a need for extra space and facilities led to the move from the city centre to a modern purpose-built school set in its own site on the banks of the
River Liffey in Palmerstown,
County Dublin.
Erwin Schrödinger A 57-year-old manuscript by the
Nobel Prize in Physics winning physicist
Erwin Schrödinger resurfaced at the school in 2012. Entitled "Fragment From An Unpublished Dialogue Of Galileo", it was written for the school's 1955 edition of the annual
Blue Coat magazine to coincide with Schrödinger leaving Dublin to take up his appointment as Chair of Physics at the
University of Vienna. Schrödinger wrote the manuscript for the school's former English teacher and Editor of the Blue Coat magazine, Ronnie Anderson (now deceased), a friend of Schrödinger when he lived in Dublin. It is now in the possession of King's Hospital alumnus Professor
Jonathan Coleman in
CRANN at
Trinity College Dublin. ==2016 allegation of abuse==