The importance of being Empey

MY SCHOOL DAYS: Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin Walton Empey dilligently studied the fine points of rugby

I was born in Dublin, but when I was a very small baby my family went to live in Dunamore in Donard in Co Wicklow, just right on the edge of the Glen of Imaal. My father was a rector. I went to school first in Dunamore. The old school is still there but they've built a modern one - I think the old one is a store room now.

I had pleurisy at a very young age and I remember being brought to the hospital several times to have this stuff drawn off my lungs. I remember being terrified out of my wits because outside the hospital was a horse-drawn hearse, black horses with black plumes and this glass thing with the coffin inside and the men were dressed in black and the whole thing absolutely terrified me. I thought, if I go into the hospital am I going to come out in that? But I made nice friends there and now that same parish is in my diocese so it's a most peculiar thing to go back there and celebrate the Eucharist at the alter where my father celebrated it and give the homily in the pulpit where my father did. It's a strange but lovely feeling.

I must have been in that school three or four years then. My father was appointed as rector of Fenagh and Myshall in Co Carlow. I went to national school there until I was 10 years old. Then just before my 10th birthday my father sent me to Enniskillen to a boarding school there, Portora Royal College. It was a Church of Ireland foundation and clergy of the Church of Ireland could get a reduced fee. It was a very fine school - Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett went there.

Before I could go into Portora though I had to go to the preparatory school Gloucester House, which I loathed. I was there towards the end of the war. They'd put two boys in a bath and when you've two boys in a bath something's going to slop out over the side - the matron saw this and went to the house master. He just came in with a stick and he hit the two of us. I hated that place.

I remember when we were out playing we would have gas masks on all the time, no matter where we went. You were beaten if you didn't have your gas mask - there was a terrible fear of gas. We always used to see the planes coming up and I remember playing rugby one day this Spitfire came and it was on fire and we were all roared at to lie down and the plane just cleared the reeds and landed on the water of Lough Erne. The pilot got out and he tried to be so nonchalant about the whole thing, but even as a boy I could see and I can still see the fear on his face.

I spent about two and a half years there, then went to the upper school and life changed marvellously. I loved my years in Portora. There were still canings in those days, but the staff were really great. And the lads were great. About 50 per cent of us were from the South, which meant for great debates and politics when you got in the older years. We had mock elections and I became leader of the nationalist party in Portora. It was so different then - I was allowed down town to speak with a nationalist politician so he'd give me all the information to fire at the leaders of the "unionist" party. It was a extraordinarily open type of education.

And there of course I fell in love with rugby, which has been a life-long love. I played rugby for the school. Unfortunately, it was a my main interest in school. I have a report from my housemaster. It said, "If this boy showed the same application to his studies as he does to rugby, there might be some future for him." My mother was not pleased with that, but I enjoyed myself.