Clongowes Wood College

Clongowes Wood College is a prestigious boys-only secondary school in County Kildare, Ireland run by the Society of Jesus (The Jesuits) since 1814, making it one of Ireland's oldest Catholic schools. The school featured prominently in James Joyce's semiautobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

It currently has 450 students. 2004 is Clongowes' 190th academic year.

Aspects of life at Clongowes include the following:

there are six class or year forms, starting with Rudiments and running through Grammar, Syntax, Humanities, Poetry and Rhetoric; these are grouped into three lines;
the ditch at the front of the Castle is called the Golly Mocky;
the castle is old, but has suffered from a "chocolate box" type restoration in the 19th century (fashionable at the time); it is situated astride the Ramparts, which is the ditch and wall constructed for the defense of the Pale in medieval times;
the castle is connected to the modern buildings by an elevated corridor, the Serpentine Gallery referred to by James Joyce;
there is a 19th century Pleasure Grounds, where pupils first dare to smoke cigarettes - they then graduate to the Green Room and the back wall of the theatre stage, until they end up brazenly puffing away in the toilets at 11 am break-time and then at 4.05 pm, when everybody else has gone out to rugby practice;
people from the nearby village of Clane (where most of the cigarettes are bought) are affectionately referred to as Claneites;
the kick-off chant used by supporters at Leinster Senior Cup rugby games is the Wumba (spelling disputed), which is probably an Indian colonial nonsense song;
on first entering the college, people are struck by the straightness of the tree-lined avenue, and then the conversation turns to Dutch elm disease and what is to be done when the trees all die;
there is a nine-hole golf course, and pupils have to climb an enormous hill to reach the second tee and light their cigarettes;
one of the rugby pitches is called the Cabbage Patch;
Rhetoric block, where final year pupils are housed, was built in the nineteen seventies and is said to have a structural fault ("a giant crack") running through it.

Famous alumni

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