Ballyvourney De Salle College,

Colaiste Isagain

Co. Cork

Documenting our Heritage

De Salle College Colaiste Iosagain Ballyvourney

This boarding school was familiar to many people throughout Munster and further afield as an educational establishment up to its closure in 1989.

The college is still a major landmark on the Cork to Killarney road, midway between Ballyvourney and Ballymakeera.

Plans were announced by former Education Minister Micheal Martin in 1999 to develop an all-Irish education centre at the site, which could have involved up to 30 staff. His successor, Dr Michael Woods, turned the sod for the project a year later but various delays have held up the development since then, despite spending more than Euro 600,000 on its planning.

The college was partly used as the filming location for the film Song for a Raggy Boy staring Aidan Quinn.

The film is set in 1939 on the brink of World War II in the St. Judes Reformatory School, a ruthless Irish school for boys. Gray, gloomy and ruled by the sadistic Brother John, the school prefers punishment to rehabilitation. But new lay teacher William Franklin (Aidan Quinn), fresh from the front-line of the Spanish Civil War, fights to liberate the boys from their oppressors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_for_a_Raggy_Boy

November 2008 - the De Salle College is falling into a sorry state of abandonment.