year, the institute was able to acquire the Springfield premises after the school there closed. After a comparatively short interval, a search was begun to find a site on which a larger college campus could be developed. Work finally began in 1879 on land acquired on the Limerick Road, and the college was built to a rather severe neo-Gothic design. Financial problems occasioned by the bankruptcy of the builder led to alterations in the plans, and some of the finishing touches were postponed, never to be completed. Visitors to the college are often shown such features as the plain uncarved label stops around the Gothic windows and the Clock Tower, with no clock — all now part of the fabric of college tradition. Perhaps the most famous president of the college was Canon William Kennedy, head of St. Flannan's between 1919 and 1932. During the Anglo-Irish War, the college was a hotbed of separatist sentiment, from where the Canon personally organised the collection of the famous Dáil Loan in Clare. Still preserved in the college are letters from both Éamon de Valera and Michael Collins in connection with this undertaking. Canon Kennedy was arrested in July 1921 by British forces and interned on Bere Island. The early decades of the new state were grim as only limited funding was available for secondary education, and most costs had to be met out from the college's resources alone, but some curriculum development did take place. In 1937, for example, Physics was introduced as a subject for the Leaving Certificate, remaining for many years the only science subject available at that level. The measure of the expansion that has taken place over the past thirty years is considerable; in 1962 there were some 370 pupils in St. Flannan's (140 of whom were day boys) and only 17 teachers. By 2004, the numbers had risen to more than 1,000 students and staff numbers had risen to 66. In September 2002, Coed classes were introduced in First Year. In September 2003, a new wing containing new facilities was opened. In 2009, the college experienced very severe flooding, with much of the college grounds being submerged and water breaching the perimeter wall because of a small stream that runs underneath the college. Ranking St Flannan's was ranked third in Ireland according to one of the most comprehensive league tables, published in The Irish Times, to date.