Coleraine Academical Institution


Coleraine Academical Institution was a voluntary grammar school for boys in Coleraine, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland.
Coleraine Academical Institution occupied a site on the Castlerock Road, where it was founded in 1860. It was, for many years, a boarding school until the boarding department closed in 1999. It was one of eight Northern Irish schools represented on the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference. The school had an enrolment of 778 pupils, aged 11–19, as of 2012. The school was generally regarded for its high academic standards and extensive sporting facilities, including playing fields, indoor swimming pool, boathouse, rugby pavilion, sports pavilion and gymnasium. The Templeton Auditorium lights can be seen from Harpurs Hill. The school has an extensive past pupil organisation, "The Coleraine Old Boys' Association", which has several branches across the world.
Coleraine Inst was nine times winner of the Ulster Schools Cup, the world's second-oldest rugby competition, in which it competed every year since 1876.
The school origins and land are tied to the Worshipful Company of Clothworkers, one of the Livery Companies making up the City of London Corporation.
As part of a general re-organisation of schools in the Coleraine area over a number of years, Coleraine Academical Institution was merged in September 2015 with Coleraine High School on Coleraine's Lodge Road and became a fully boys' and girls' grammar school called Coleraine Grammar School.
WWW coleraineai.com

Headmasters

Over the years the school has had nine headmasters.
  • Alex Waugh Young, CAI's founding principal. Very little is known of him.
  • Thomas Galway Houston served the school for 45 years, enjoying a long retirement in Portstewart until his death in 1939 at the age of 96. Houston served as a member of the Senate in the Stormont Parliament for Queen's University, Belfast.
  • Thomas James Beare – affectionately known as "Tommy John" – had a rather shorter tenure in office, until his premature retirement on health grounds in 1927.
  • William White – commonly known as "The Chief"
  • George Humphreys, by whom the major physical expansion of the school was guided. Previously on the staff at Campbell College, Belfast, it was during his headmastership that Inst became an H.M.C. school.
  • Robert F. J. Rodgers, former headmaster of Bangor Grammar School, was headmaster of Inst until his appointment as principal of Stranmillis Training College, Belfast.
  • R. Stanley Forsythe was appointed following a ten-year period as headmaster of The Royal School, Dungannon and remained in post until retirement.
  • Leonard F. Quigg was the first headmaster in the school's history to have been promoted 'from within the ranks'. Quigg served as an assistant master, head of English, Senior Master, as both junior and senior Vice-Principal before his appointment as headmaster in January 2004. Quigg retired in 2007.
  • David Carruthers is CAI's current headmaster. He was previously the head of mathematics at Royal Belfast Academical Institution.

Notable alumni