Many students who went to Cistercian College Roscrea did so because a father or a family member had gone there in previous generations. The first connection that my family had with the Cistercians was when my grand-uncle James Murphy went to work there on the building of the Abbey. He liked it so much that he joined the Monastery and became a priest. In 1905 the abbot of the Monastery asked the then Brother Alberic to be the first Bursar and Dean of the College. In the second decade of the 20th century, his three nephews: Tim, Charles, and Pat Hurley (who were brothers) went to CCR as boarders. Charlie became a priest (and later a Monsignor) - his second name was "Francis" which is my second name too named after him. Tim became a doctor and moved to Cardiff in Wales. Pat bought a farm near Carnew in Co Wicklow (the farm where I grew up and where my Mum and Dad still live) - he lived in Dublin with his sister Eileen.
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| Pat Hurley |
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| Fr Alberic (James) Murphy. |
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| My Dad in the early 1940s. |
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| What I looked like in 1974. |
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My Dad went to school in CCR from 1944 to 1947 - hard times at the end of World War II. He once cycled all the way from Carnew to Roscrea! Myself and my two brothers (Joe and Brian) also went to CCR - between 1972 and 1982 there was an unbroken sequence of three O'Loughlins boarding there. There have been no family members since. I often wondered if I had sons would I have sent them there. Probably not. I have lived in Dublin since 1978 and there are many schools close by my home that would be just as good if not better. Sadly, there will be no future generations of Hurleys or O'Loughlins attending CCR.
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