Qualla: St Flannan's College

St Flannan's College: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Oscar76, CC BY 3.0. There is a clock tower at St. Flannan's College with no clock. The Gothic windows around it have plain uncarved label stops where ornate carving was supposed to go. These are not aesthetic choices; they are scars from a bankruptcy. When the original builder went broke during construction in the early 1880s, the diocese had to redraw the plans, cutting the decorative work and postponing the finishing touches indefinitely. The clock that was meant to fill the tower never arrived. A century and a half later, those omissions have become part of the school's identity. Students walk past them every day without noticing, the way you stop noticing the rough edges of any place you've lived in long enough.

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Image: Oscar76 | CC BY 3.0

St Flannan's College: Mr. Fitzsimons of Springfield

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Oscar76, CC BY 3.0. The story begins in 1846 at Springfield House, Ennis, where a Mr. Fitzsimons ran a private academy. The Diocese of Killaloe took him under its patronage, and Springfield became both a diocesan seminary and a Catholic boarding school for boys. The arrangement worked. By the early ...

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Image: Oscar76 | CC BY 3.0

St Flannan's College: The Diocesan Takeover

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Oscar76, CC BY 3.0. Under Fitzsimons's successor, Springfield broke with the University of London and affiliated instead with Newman's Catholic University in Dublin. By 1865 the diocese had had enough and established its own diocesan college completely under clerical control at #12 Bindon Street - n...

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St Flannan's College: Canon Kennedy and the Dáil Loan

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Oscar76, CC BY 3.0. Canon William Kennedy, president of St. Flannan's from 1919 to 1932, ran the college during the Anglo-Irish War. Under his leadership the school became a centre of separatist activity. The Canon personally organised the collection of the Dáil Loan in Clare - the bond drive launch...

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St Flannan's College: Five Bishops, Four Hurlers, and a President

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Oscar76, CC BY 3.0. St. Flannan's alumni read like a partial census of post-independence Ireland. Five future Bishops of Killaloe attended - Michael Fogarty (1904-54), Michael Harty (1967-94), Joseph Rodgers (1955-66), Willie Walsh (1994-2010), and Denis Kelly (Bishop of Ross, 1897-1924). John McCar...

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Image: Oscar76 | CC BY 3.0

St Flannan's College: The Flood of 2009

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Oscar76, CC BY 3.0. On 19 November 2009, much of County Clare went underwater during the worst Atlantic storm cycle in living memory. St. Flannan's experienced severe flooding: the college grounds were submerged, and water breached the perimeter wall because of a small stream that runs underneath th...

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Image: Oscar76 | CC BY 3.0