Skip to content
Tuam.ie
Schools · Bishop Street · Tuam

St. Jarlath's College

St. Jarlath's College is a school on Bishop Street in Tuam, County Galway, 523 m east of the Square. Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Mercy Secondary School are within 219 m.

Catholic secondary school founded in 1800 to prepare boys for Maynooth, now co-educational with about 625 pupils and a record twelve Hogan Cup wins in Gaelic football.

Kind
Schools
Street
Bishop Street
From the Square
523 m east, 11 min on foot
Phone
+353 93 24342
Website
jarlaths.ie
Email
info@jarlaths.ie
Parking
Car park on The Walks, 112 m away
Bus stop
Tuam (Vicar Street Cathedral), 303 m away

The map does not yet record opening hours for St. Jarlath's College. Anyone can add them on OpenStreetMap; this page picks the change up at the next refresh.

Plan of the streets around St. Jarlath's College, 340 metres across
The marker is this place; drag to turn the model.Open the whole town
Plan of the surrounding 300 mPlan of the streets around St. Jarlath's College, 340 metres across

The story of St. Jarlath's College

The college began in two thatched cottages on the Mall in 1800. Archbishop Edward Dillon founded it to prepare boys for the seminary at Maynooth, and had to ask the Protestant archbishop, Dr Beresford, for permission to do so. Its first president, Oliver Kelly, went on to become Archbishop of Tuam himself. The school soon moved to Bishop Street, to the building still called the Old College, and added houses there in 1824.

The present grounds were bought in 1856 by Archbishop John McHale. The land was known as Keighrey's Park and part of it served as the town's fair green, which McHale went on letting to the town commissioners for thirty pounds a year until 1875, when the college was extended with two wings on either side of the 1858 building. McHale had also brought the Christian Brothers to Tuam in 1851, which led to Tuam CBS and later St Patrick's College, the day school that educated many of the town's less well-off boys for a century and a half.

The two schools came together in the end. Amalgamation had been proposed in the late 1990s on the promise of a new building that never came; as boarding was phased out and numbers fell, Archbishop Michael Neary decided in March 2008 to proceed without it. First years enrolled at St Jarlath's from September 2008 and the merger was complete a year later, in the old St Jarlath's building. The college is co-educational now, under the patronage of the Archbishop of Tuam, with an enrolment of 625 in 2024.

Two traditions define it. Since The Mikado in 1944 the college's operatic society has staged a musical or opera every year, from 1969 with the Mercy Convent, and its Hot Mikado took best overall and best chorus at the Connacht Tribune awards in 2008. And there is football: the senior team has won the Hogan Cup, the All-Ireland colleges championship, twelve times since its first in 1947, more than any other school, with fourteen further finals lost, and holds forty-nine Connacht colleges titles. The amalgamated school reached the Hogan Cup final again in 2011, losing to St Colman's of Newry by a point.

Written from Wikipedia, "St Jarlath's College" (CC BY-SA 4.0, read 2026-09-18). Facts only from those sources; the words are ours.

St. Jarlath's College in pictures

St Jarlath's College
St Jarlath's College
Andreas F. Borchert, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Getting to St. Jarlath's College

On foot
11 minutes from the Square, 0.86 km along the streets, ending on Bishop Street.
By car
Park at the car park on The Walks, 112 m away. Tuam is 30 km from Galway city on the N17.
By bus
The nearest stop is Tuam (Vicar Street Cathedral), 303 m away.
Directions from where you are
Open the model above, tap the pin and choose “Directions here”; the route is drawn from your own position.

While you are there

2 shops within 300 m, including Vincent's and Patrice's.

Bishop Street itself has 4 named places on the map, and 3 car parks along it.

Within a short walk

  1. 164 m
  2. 219 m

Also on Bishop Street

  2. Patrice's
    Beauty
  3. Vincent's
    Charity shops

Everything on Bishop Street

Other schools in Tuam

  1. 219 m
  2. 270 m
  3. 284 m
  4. 480 m
  5. 514 m
  6. 1.0 km

All 7 schools in Tuam

Questions people ask

Where is St. Jarlath's College?
On Bishop Street in Tuam, 523 m east of the Square; the nearest car park is 112 m away.
What is the history of St. Jarlath's College?
Catholic secondary school founded in 1800 to prepare boys for Maynooth, now co-educational with about 625 pupils and a record twelve Hogan Cup wins in Gaelic football. The full story is above.
How do I contact St. Jarlath's College?
By phone on +353 93 24342, or through jarlaths.ie.
How far is St. Jarlath's College from the centre of Tuam?
11 minutes on foot from the Square, 0.86 km by the streets; 523 m as the crow flies.
Are there other schools nearby?
6 other schools in Tuam; the closest is Mercy Secondary School, 219 m away.

Source record: OpenStreetMap way/331682240, read on 2026-09-18. The street is the mapped address where there is one, otherwise the nearest named road. Distances are straight lines.