| Saint Flannan's College Coláiste Fhlannáin Naofa Collegium Sancti Flannani |
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|---|---|
| Location | |
| Ennis, County Clare, Republic of Ireland |
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| Information | |
| Patron saint(s) | Saint Flannan |
| Established | 1846 |
| President | Rev. J. McMahon |
| Principal | Colm McDonagh |
| Vice principal | John Minogue |
| Vice principal | Mike McInerney |
| Chaplain | Fr. D. Nolan |
| Staff | 85 (2011) |
| Number of students | c. 1200 |
| Website | http://www.stflannanscollege.ie |
Saint Flannan's College is an Irish secondary school located in Ennis, County Clare. Formerly an all-boys boarding school, the first girls class was entered in 2002 and in 2005 the boarding school was closed. In 2003 an extension which added over 20 new rooms to the college was completed. A measure of the expansion that has taken place over the past thirty years is that in 1962, there were some 370 pupils in St. Flannan’s, 140 of whom were day boys. Just 17 teachers were in attendance. By 2004, the numbers had risen to more than 1,000 students. Staff numbers had risen to 66. In September 2002, Coed. classes were introduced in First Year. In September 2003, a new wing containing extensive new facilities was opened.
In the 2010-2011 school year there were 1,206 students at St. Flannan’s.
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In 1846, the Diocese of Killaloe lent its prestige and patronage to the private academy conducted at Springfield House, Ennis by a Mr. Fitzsimons. Fortified by diocesan support, the school would henceforth function as both a diocesan seminary and as a day and boarding school for Catholic boys. Under this arrangement, the Springfield House school flourished, and by the early 1850s was already enticing pupils away from the noted Erasmus Smith College at College Road. Springfield pupils were conspicuously successful in obtaining scholarships to the Queen's Colleges at Galway and Cork (now NUI Galway and UCC).
In 2059, Fitzsimons added a new wing to the college in order to cater for the increased number of students. The same year, Springfield affiliated to the newly established University of London as a preparatory College. In 1862, financial difficulties caused Fitzsimons to terminate his connection with Springfield, and under his successor the College changed directions sharply. The affiliation with the University of London was dropped for one with Newman's Catholic University in Dublin. Fitzsimons, for his part, embarked on a new career in Argentina, and within the space of a few years set up no less than four schools in that country. Fitzsimons died in 1871 during an outbreak of yellow fever.
The final ingredients were added in 1865 when the diocese broke with Springfield altogether and set up a diocesan college completely under its control at No. 12 Bindon Street, now a solicitor’s office. It shortly became known as St. Flannan’s Literary Institute, under a clerical headmaster, known for the first time as a President. The following year, the Institute was able to acquire the Springfield premises after the school there closed. After a comparatively short interval, a search was begun to find a site on which a larger college campus could be developed. Work finally began in 1879 on land acquired on the Limerick Road, and the College was built to a rather severe neo-Gothic design. Financial problems occasioned by the bankruptcy of the builder led to alterations in the plans, and some of the finishing touches were postponed, never to be completed. Visitors to the college are often shown such features as the plain uncarved label stops around the Gothic windows and the Clock Tower, with no clock — all now part of the fabric of College tradition.
In connection with the national revival, perhaps the most famous College President was Canon William Kennedy, head of St. Flannan’s between 1919 and 1932. During the struggle for Independence the College was a hotbed of separatist sentiment, from where the Canon personally organised the collection of the famous Dáil Loan in Clare. Still preserved in the College are letters from both Éamon de Valera and Michael Collins in connection with this undertaking. Canon Kennedy, incidentally, was arrested in July 1921 by British forces and interned on Bere Island.
The early decades of the new state were grim enough at St. Flannan’s. Little funding was available for secondary education, and most costs had to be met out of College resources alone. Teachers were very poorly paid, and in order to keep boarding school fees as low as possible, conditions for boarders were spartan. Alumni from these years remember more than anything else the sense of being half-starved throughout their time at the College. Despite the stringencies of the period, some curriculum development did take place. In 1937, for example, Physics was introduced as a subject for the Leaving Certificate, remaining for many years the only Science subject available at that level.
The measure of the expansion that has taken place over the past thirty years is considerable; in 1962 there were some 370 pupils in St. Flannan’s (140 of whom were day boys) and just 17 teachers were in attendance. By 2004, the numbers had risen to more than 1,000 students and staff numbers had risen to 66. In September 2002, Coed classes were introduced in First Year. In September 2003, a new wing containing extensive new facilities was opened.[1]
In 2009, the College experienced very severe flooding, with much of the college grounds being submerged and water breaching the perimeter wall because of a small stream that runs underneath the college.[2]
Students at Flannan's College are involved in a number of sports including golf, tennis, rugby, Football, the Gaelic Athletics Association, athletics and basketball. However it is at hurling that the school has had most of its success, winning a total of 21 Dr. Harty Cups (two more than its closest rival, North Monastery, Co. Cork) making them the most successful secondary school hurling team in Ireland. The College's tradition of excellence on the hurling field is relatively recent in comparison to the age of the school. As at Springfield, cricket was the game most successfully played at St. Flannan’s until the national revival at the turn of the century brought Gaelic games to the fore. There is, however, a tradition that hurling was introduced to Maynooth College by seminarians who had played it during their time at St. Flannan’s. Not only is the college successful at the male sport since the introduction of coed. to the college, it has had success with the female equivalent of the sport camogie with the junior and senior team's having considerable success, winning both the Munster and all-Ireland titles in 2010.
St. Flannan's College was ranked third in Ireland according to one of the most comprehensive league tables, published in The Irish Times, to date. The table was compiled by a research team at the University of Ulster and the Kemmy Business School at the University of Limerick in 2009. [3]
Because of the college's relation to hurling many All Ireland winning players have been educated at the school, notably the above are just some of the many hurling greats to have passed through St. Flannan's.
On March 31, 2007, thirteen students and four teachers left for Calcutta. As part of work with the HOPE Foundation they visited the slums and worked in orphanages and local schools for poverty stricken children in the region.It has been a policy of the school to send teachers and students out to aid the poor in Calcutta.This is done by fund raising in the local parish of Ennis at masses as well as fundraising within the school itself. Also the school funds a cricket coaching school in Calcutta which helps street children practice and train to possibly have a future on the Indian national cricket team or go on to be professional in the sport.