Clongowes Wood College

Clongowes Wood College SJ is a Catholic voluntary boarding school for boys near Clane, County Kildare, Ireland, founded by the Jesuits in 1814. It features prominently in James Joyce's semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. One of five Jesuit schools in Ireland, it had 450 students in 2019. The school's current headmaster, Christopher Lumb, is the first lay headmaster in its history. School The school is a secondary boarding school for boys from Ireland and other parts of the world. The school is divided into three groups, known as "lines". The Third Line is for first and second year students, the Lower Line for third and fourth years, and the Higher Line for fifth and sixth years. Each year is known by a name, drawn from the Jesuit Ratio Studiorum: Elements (first year), Rudiments (second), Grammar (third), Syntax (fourth), Poetry (fifth), and Rhetoric (sixth). Buildings The medieval castle was originally built in the 13th century by John de Hereford, an early Anglo-Norman warrior and landowner in North Kildare. He had been given extensive lands in the area of Kill, Celbridge and Mainham by his brother, Adam de Hereford, who had come to Ireland with 'Strongbow', the Earl of Pembroke.