St Colman's College, Fermoy
St Colman's College (Irish: Coláiste Cholmáin) is an all-boys voluntary secondary school, and former boarding school, in Fermoy, County Cork. The College was founded in 1856 and opened in 1858 as the diocesan college of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Cloyne. Archbishop Thomas Croke, after whom Croke Park is named, became the school's first President in this year. The College is renowned for its sporting history. History. The site upon which St. Colman's was built was bought by Fr. Timothy Murphy in 1856. Murphy commissioned John Pine Hurley to design the  new College building. Twenty months after construction began, St. Colman's opened its doors to its first students in 1858. The original College building is three storeys in height and boasts an impressive six-storey tower. The facade of red sandstone with limestone facings. The building, with its tall tower, has since become an iconic structure in Fermoy and looms over the town's skyline. A west wing was added in 1887 while the school chapel was added in the early 1900s. A new classroom block was added to the College in 1969. This new block boasted a large assembly  hall and twenty-two classrooms. A library in the College, known among the students and faculty as the Priest's Library, houses many rare manuscripts and books. From the very beginning, St. Colman's welcomed boarders from all over Munster; however, boarding ceased in the College in 2003. Sport. The College has a strong hurling tradition and has won the Dr. Harty Cup nine times (1948, 1949, 1977, 1992, 1996, 1997, 2001, 2002 & 2003). Today all teams are represented by local club players. Today the sport is as strong as ever but the College also has a much more diverse  sporting ethos. The College has successful in competition with sports as diverse as equestrian, pitch and putt, tennis, swimming, rugby (former Leinster and Ireland prop Mike Ross being a past pupil), cricket, basketball, and badminton in recent years. The St. Colman's Health & Fitness Campus, a huge redevelopment of the College's sports grounds, was opened in 2015. The project included the building of brand new dressing rooms and showers, three full sized tennis courts and a fitness walkway around the Harty pitch. Notable alumni. Irish history. One of the seven signatories of the 1916 Proclamation, Thomas McDonagh, taught in  St. Colman's for a period of time.