Prf. Garen Night's School for the Gifted[]
Headmaster:
Garen Night
PT Teacher: Graydon Creed
Astronomy: Ashley Martin
Science: Kevin Kristofferson
Medical Sciences: Dr. Patricia Harker
Students by hero name
Slash, aka Tiffany Mir
Psyche
Cannon, aka Willy Bradshaw
Powerhause, aka Derreck Moris
Frostbite, aka Casey McQuire
Kerry Williams
Blackout, aka Darren Jones
Tommy
Amaya
Rick Mazzick "Midas"
Located in Ireland's Wicklow Mountains is Humewood, a Gothic Revival
castle designed by English architect William White in 1867 for William
Wentworth Fitzwilliam Hume Dick. The residence, which was recently
bought by international businessman Christien Lucien, is now renovated
to be a large school for gifted children.
In Ireland, the country house was more than just an expression of its
owner. It also had a military purpose as a defensible stronghold and
rallying point for the local militia. The original eighteenth-century
house on the Humewood estate had withstood sieges, and many of its
defensive features were incorporated in the Gothic Revival structure,
built between 1867 and 1870, that now stands on the grounds. The
magnificent mansion was commissioned by William Wentworth Fitzwilliam
Hume Dick. Like his father, William Hoare Hume, and grandfather William
Hume, he was a member of Parliament for County Wicklow. From his mother,
Charlotte Dick, daughter of a wealthy Dublin merchant, he inherited the
fortune that enabled him to demolish the old house with its Georgian
facade and erect a castle faced with pure granite and containing the
most modern conveniences. There were baths on every floor, and the
kitchen was connected to the dining room by means of a rotating hatch
through which dishes could be passed "without letting through either
draught, noise, or smell." In recognition of the maternal contribution
to his improved status, Hume added his mother’s family name to his own.
The architect he chose, William White, is almost forgotten: He features,
if at all, in books on Victorian architecture as the designer of two
fine churches in London and one in Hampshire. Humewood, sadly, proved to
be his only major country house. Having exceeded his budget by more
than 50 percent, White, along with his client, was sued by the builder.
The case, won by the builder, became a landmark in architectural case
law. White’s career suffered, and he never received another important
commission. But, as historian Mark Girouard, author of The Victorian Country House,
observes, the loss was really architec-ture’s, “for this odd, original,
gifted, cranky, over-sanguine and unconventional architect had designed
one of the most remarkable of Victorian country houses.”
White had worked in Gilbert Scott’s office before setting up on his own
in Cornwall. Although a Gothicist, he was also a rationalist, believing
that architecture was a science as well as an art. “In all design,” he
wrote, “it is of far greater consequence that the laws of fitness should
be followed than that a rigid uniformity should be observed. The end of
nature and of necessity must be first served, and then the ends of
art." White considered the equilateral triangle to be the basis of good
proportions. Both the main house and the stables at Humewood involve the
elaborate interplay of triangular forms with crenellated ga-bles,
turrets and pinnacles echoing each other at different levels, gradually
building up to a massive central tower. Though the outline is
quintes-sentially romantic, especially at dusk or when the Irish rain
emphasizes the stark granite walls, the arrangement was not just
aesthetic. As White explained to his colleagues at the Royal Institute
of British Architects, the old house had withstood siege during the 1798
uprising, and it was “desirable to build a house capable of defence in
case of an attack... although we may hope that such disturbances have
now become a thing of the past.” Un-characteristically for a Victorian
Gothic house, there is a basement, which lifts the first floor off the
ground, improving security and enhancing the exterior elevation, while
raising “the ‘living’ part of the house above the cold and damps of the
country.”
The last of the Humes, Hume Dick’s granddaughter, Catherine
Marie-Made-White referred to the 60,000-square-foot house as “a family
mansion not above the average size." Commissioned by Hume Dick as “an
occasional resort in the summer recess or the shooting season," Humewood
remained in the family until the death of the last descendant,
Catherine Marie-Madeleine Hume-Weygand, in 1992. Leine (“Mimi”)
Hume-Weygand (whose father-in-law, General Maxime Weygand, was in
command of the French army at the fall of France in 1940), died without
heirs in 1992, and the property was sold at auction.
Humewood Castle has been lavishly yet sympathetically
restored, with twelve of the fourteen luxuriously appointed bedrooms
having en-suite bathrooms. All the bedrooms are strikingly different,
each decorated around a specific theme. Move from the elegant Empire
Suite to the period splendour of the Napoleonic Bedroom; from the warmth
of the Vivaldi Suite to the powerful beauty of the Dynasty Suite.