Clongowes Wood College SJ

"Beautiful setting with excellent grounds. Kames Joyce attended here."

"Lovely environment with renowned academic history."

"Excellent facility with outstanding grounds, it is also the historic site of Castle Browne (the Main Castle part of the College) founded by Thomas Browne who was a descendant of the first Norman settlers in Kildare. It is mentioned in the Close Roll of King Henry IV on 24th February 1418 as the dowerlands of Anastasia Wogan, widow of Sir David Wogan of Rathcoffey, from whom Thomas Browne bought it in 1579 and the 'third part of the Silva de Clongowes, in the western part therein, that is to say forty acres’ (History of the Pale, Sir Malcolm Devitt 1901). It was his son,Thomas Jr., who spent over a decade in the New World setting up a trade route for the supply of goods from England to Virginia who multiplied the Browne fortune two fold by 1659. In the year 1660 (Devitt 1901)  Thomas Jr. brokered a treaty between the Algonquian people, living beside the Virginian coast, and the Iroquoian people, living along the southern Tidewater region, which brought him to the favour of the Restoration king, Charles II, in 1661. It is said, in local folklore, that Squire Running-Hawke, Thomas' Algonquian friend and the brave that saved his life, arrived in Clane in 1668 (From History to Folklore, L.B. Curry McMillan 1953) and upon seeing the Pale (the boundary of which was at Clongowes) he howled the cry of the wolf, a sound not heard in those parts since the Elizabethan scourges that hunted the Irish wolf to extinction. It was a wail of recognition. He had foreseen the fate of his people in the deforestation and persecution of the Gael in the lands beyond the Pale. It is said he died on the spot, and a vial, that Browne had carried with him in his vest pocket, was used to catch his last tears. (McMillan 1953) This vial it is said, according to local tradition, was kept by the Browne family in Clongowes for over two centuries, until the Castle was eventually sold to the Jesuits in 1814. It remained in the possession of the Jesuits until one faithful day, in lieu of holy water, it was administered, by the short-sighted Father John Conmee SJ, to a convalescing scholar in the college’s infirmary. (Curry McMillan 1953) Local legend has it that this scholar was none other than one Mr. James Joyce, a student residing there at the time in 1889. (Coughlin 1962) It is a legend borne out by a recently published letter  that Joyce himself sent to his friend Cleary Jones in 1909 in which he says: “And I downed the salty tears of that Wild Brave as though they were the miraculous waters of St. Brigid herself. If anyone asks you, you can tell them from me that it was from this ingestion, and this alone, that I obtained my wild predilections and unruly cows-lick, and not at all from the usual familial inheritances.” (Collected Letters of James Joyce, Charlton Press 2009)"

"The school itself is set in glorious grounds, it has a long and very proud history and tradition. A number of my ancestors were pupils there with James McLornan from Dundrod, Crumlin Co Antrim having the distinction of being 'first boy'. I was very honoured and extremely fortunate to be invited to attend the centenary ceremony and celebrations. A beautiful day one I will never forget."