History

Sharavogue was established in 1983 and is located in the Victorian Sharavogue house in Glenageary which was built in 1870.

With small beginnings, 3 staff and 10 children , it is now home to 200 children – many families with brothers and sisters ranging from the babyroom up to 6th class and continues to be like one big family.

Sharavogue was one of the first childcare establishments in the country that incorporated the concept of child-centred care and education in one environment. 

It continues today to provide a one stop shop for parents for all their childcare and educational needs incorporated in the Crèche, Montessori and Junior school.

Sharavogue and the adjacent Kilcolman Houses together represented the peak of a type of high Victorian house-building. The twin houses were built around 1870 by a wealthy merchant named Patrick Gleeson, grocer and seed merchant of Thomas Street in Dublin who lived in Kilcolman.

He came from County Offaly where the names of Kilcolman and Sharavogue originated. Of the two houses, only Sharavogue now remains and it is used as a pre-school. It exhibits both in its external stucco decoration and in its internal plasterwork , the most lavish and florid style.

This popular Victorian style was known as “Italianate” because of the preponderance for decorative features such as round-arched windows, foliate scrolls and brackets, balustrades, urns, columns and other devices borrowed from the Italian Renaissance.

The house standing two storeys over a high basement is square in plan and its elaborate porch and entrance is approached by a double flight of steps.