Garbally College
The big house in Garbally Park was the seat of the Earls of Clancarty until the Diocese of Clonfert bought it in 1923 for a school that had already moved three times. St Joseph's College, which everyone called Garbally, taught the town's boys for a century, won the Connacht Schools Senior Cup 47 times and sent players to the Irish rugby team, before merging with Ardscoil Mhuire in September 2025 to form Clonfert College.
Checked against the source on 2026-09-19.
No machine-readable author provided. Damac assumed (based on copyright claims)., public domain via Wikimedia Commons
Garbally College, St. Catherine's Church on the 3D model; tap a pin for its page and directions.
Four homes in thirty years
The college was founded in 1892 as a seminary to educate priests for the diocese, at Cartron, with money from James Madden. It moved to Esker near Athenry in 1894, to the house known as The Pines at Creagh outside Ballinasloe in 1901, and to Garbally in 1923. It ran as a boarding school before becoming a day school under a board of management for the Bishop of Clonfert, and it was among the first schools to offer Transition Year when the programme began in 1973, teaching woodwork, metalwork, home economics, technical graphics, business, design and music alongside the core subjects. Two bishops of Clonfert, John Dignan and John Kirby, served as president, and the Fine Gael TD Ulick Burke taught here.
The Senior Cup
Garbally's name in Connacht is rugby. The college won the Connacht Schools Senior Cup 47 times, the last in 2020, and the Junior Cup 43 times, the last in 2019; the last cup-winning team to include boarders was that of 2007, and the final side to play as St Joseph's College, Garbally took the field in 2025. Hurling, football and soccer were played too. The park is pinned on the model with St Michael's church across the town.
Questions people ask
Is Garbally College still open?
How many Connacht Senior Cups did Garbally win?
Whose house was Garbally?
Written from Wikipedia, "Garbally College" (CC BY-SA 4.0), read on 2026-09-19, and from the OpenStreetMap places on the model. Nothing has been added from memory; follow the source for its footnotes.