St. Malachy’s College 

1833 –2009

St. Malachy’s College was founded in 1833 and thus it is the oldest Catholic Secondary in Ulster and the fourth  oldest in Ireland.

It was founded four years after the Daniel O’Connell’s successful campaign for Catholic Emancipation and it was perhaps in the warm afterglow of this success and the fact that Catholics made up one sixth of Belfast’s 50,000 population in 1829 that encouraged the then Bishop of Down and Connor, Dr. William Crolly, to purchase land from the McCabe family in 1832 with the intention of erecting a Diocesan College and Seminary.

The radical Presbyterian McCabes owned farmland called ‘Vicinage’ on the northern outskirts of the town of Belfast during the 1790’s.  Thomas McCabe, a watchmaker from North Street, successfully stopped Belfast becoming an entrepot port for the slave trade during the 1780s and was afterwards was a founder of the first United Irish Society in Belfast in October 1791.  We are fortunate to have the 1796 estate map of Vicinage where the tree-lined front avenue and McCabe’s two storied Georgian house at the top of this avenue are clearly seen.

The number 8 shape of McCabes land in the 1790s is much the same shape as the present College campus.

The names of the first 32 pupils at St. Malachy’s are preserved in the College Roll books stored today in the College Archive library.  These first College pupils all became serving priests in dioceses across Ireland or in the missions abroad.

During the decades before the 1860s, College students boarded in Thomas McCabes old house at the top of the avenue and trekked daily down Clifton Street for their lessons in St. Patricks National School in Donegal Street.  Dr. William Dorrian, successor to Dr. Crolly as Bishop of Down & Connor, decided to erect school buildings on the Vicinage site in the late 1860s.  Dr. Dorrian worked closely with the first College President Dr Richard Marner to house 110 pupils and a staff of five priests in classrooms on the ground floor of the present frontal building, with dormitories for the students on the top floor.  The College Chapel, behind the main façade, was completed in 1882.  Dr. Henry Henry succeeded Dr. Marner as President in 1876 and the so-called ‘English School’ wing was also completed in 1882.  In 1880 the College became a component College of the Royal University of Ireland and after this a large part of school time was spent tutoring College students for degrees at university.  By 1886 some 215 boys attended St. Malachys – some belonged to the prep school, some pursued Intermediate exam courses and some studied university courses.  Some of the many gifted  pupils who studied at St. Malachys during the 1880s included Desmond O’Loan, (later to be Prof. of Church History at Maynooth),  Fr. Vincent McNabb, Alexander Blayney (surgeon), Eoin MacNeill, John McBride, PJ O’Neill (Irish and Classical Scholar) and countless other student who made their considerable mark in legal, medical and political arenas. 

Dr. McAllister succeeded Dorrian in 1885 and it was during this period that the College was pressurized to hand over part of its campus for the erection of Crumlin Road prison. Fr. PJ O’Neill became President in 1907 and it was during his period in office when a young Junior School pupil called Edward Keys Keys compiled a fascinating diary, now housed in the College Archive Library,   giving a wonderful child like insight into College life and wider Belfast on the eve of the First World War.

By 1922, the College was under the authority of the new  N.Ireland Government and a new set of Education Laws.  Some College students perished during the First World War but many were to make their names in the field of business, the Civil Service and the professions during the 1920s.  During the 1930s, students such as Cathal Daly and Brian Moore were taught by a distinguished staff, now more lay than clerical.  The Belfast Blitz of 1941 destroyed parts of the Antrim and Crumlin Roads but St. Malachy’s was saved by the quick thinking and brave action of the then College President  Fr. John McMullan who with his student priests cleared live but unexploded incendiary bombs off the College Chapel corridor roof. 

College numbers increased after the 1947 Education Act which helped to bring Grammar School education to students of all means.  45 staff taught 753 pupils at the College in 1952 and numbers reached 1000 by 1970 where it has more or less remained since.  Martin O’Neill’s class in 1970’71 were among the last to board at the College.

During the 1970s, the College thrived under the leadership of President Fr. Patrick Walsh. Canon Conway and Fr. Donal McKeown led St. Malachy’s successfully through the 1980s and ‘90s until the first lay Principal of the College, Dr. John Morrin, was appointed in 2001.