Clongowes Stories

1st September 2018

It’s that time of year again, when the young men of Clongowes begin to don the purple and white to represent the school on the rugby field and there is nothing to quicken the pulse quite so much as the sight of 15 young men striding out on to the pitch ready to give their…read article

30th August 2018

On Thursday (30th August) the young gentlemen of Rhetoric 2024 filed into the chapel to take pole position at the front – the 205th Elements class to enter the school in this, our third, century. They were shortly joined by the rest of the students from Rudiments to Rhetoric, the majority returning for another academic year, while…read article

28th August 2018

A day before the new Elements made their first tentative steps in the school and two days in advance of the return of the more seasoned campaigners up the school, the academic and prefecting staff assembled for the first of two staff days to ready themselves for the forthcoming year… The Opening Prayer was led…read article

12th June 2018

Clongowes Wood College wishes Dr Diarmuid O’Driscoll (pictured in the middle) every happiness on this his 100th birthday. Diarmuid came to Clongowes in 1930 and was happy to avail of the NUI matriculation in 1935 to leave at the end of Poetry and to study medicine without having to sit his Leaving Certificate. In those days,…read article

8th June 2018

Time to Reflect and Recharge It is high summer here in Clongowes: sunlight streams through the windows and the classrooms and galleries lie silent. Yet this silence masks the activity taking place in the examination centres where the boys of Rhetoric and Grammar are tackling the Leaving and Junior Certificate examinations. For the sixth year…read article

6th June 2018

On Wednesday June 6th, while many of their schoolmates commenced the Junior and Leaving Certificate Examinations, some 30 students from Clongowes assembled at Crumlin Children’s Hospital to start pushing two eight foot high yellow ducks from Dublin to Limerick for charity. The students at Clongowes first started pushing ducks along the 200km route in 1994…read article

6th June 2018

On Wednesday, 30th May Mr Declan O’Keeffe taught his last class in Clongowes Wood College having taught his first in September 1981. Before he left Declan addressed the staff and pupils at the final assembly of the year… I first came to work in Clongowes Wood College in a previous century before any of the current…read article

4th June 2018

Hope Foundation – Kolkata: ‘City Of Joy’ Just before Easter six Transition Year students along with Mr Noel Murray and Old Clongownian, Pyers O’Connor Nash (OC’69) set off for Kolkata, India – ‘The City of Joy’ – as part of the HOPE Foundation trip. The purpose of the trip was to visit and engage with…read article

30th May 2018

Union Day is one of the great traditions that have helped to make Clongowes what it is and has been gracing the grounds of the old Castle Browne for well over a century, ever since the first event on June 5th 1898. While the attendees in this fourth year of our third century may not have…read article

28th May 2018

Union Day Duck Push Raffle Congratulations to the winners of the Union Day Raffle: Featherblade Restaurant Voucher for two courtesy Mr. Paul McVeigh won by Ms Grainne Kennan Union Day hamper ( Clongowes jute bag , crested rugby ball, golf balls, umbrella, two bottles of wine ) won by Dean McGuinness Signed books by Robert…read article