Research Collections at Trinity
New tales from the Old Library, Trinity College Dublin
Norman Parsons Jewell was born in County Antrim and entered Trinity College Dublin in 1903. He was a star athlete in boxing, athletics and rugby and when he finished his medical degree he went to join the Colonial Medical Service in Seychelles. At the outbreak of WWI he joined the East African Medical Service with the rank of Captain and was eventually awarded the Military Cross. Jewell’s memoir has now been published by his family and this guest post by his grandson outlines his career:
In 2014 President Micheal D Higgins suggested that the Irish commemoration of the First World War should include ‘the forgotten voices and the lost stories of the past’. He was alluding to the fact that the voices of the Irish soldiers in the British army have been subdued in Irish history. Some of their stories may be found among Trinity College Library’s collection of wartime diaries and letters and a major project has just been launched to make this fascinating and moving material freely available online.
Continue reading “WW1 diaries and letters online publication”
Among the many commemorations that coincided with the hundredth anniversary of the Easter Rising were articles that reflected on Trinity’s role. Described in one newspaper as ‘a bulwark of Empire,’ the College was a crucial staging ground for the British army in its effort to subdue the insurgents. It occupied a strategic point between the General Post Office and St. Stephen’s Green, both held by Irish Volunteers.
As an early modernist examining the history of Trinity during the mid-seventeenth century British Civil Wars, I was struck by some parallels between Trinity’s role in 1916 and its place in the 1641 Rebellion. Founded fifty years earlier, by 1641 Trinity had largely failed in some aspects of its mission, namely to train a native clergy and spread Protestantism in Ireland. It catered increasingly to settlers that had arrived during the Elizabethan and Jacobean plantations. However, with the outbreak of rebellion in 1641, Trinity assumed a role as an English military outpost—and it nearly drove the University into dissolution.
A series of manuscripts in the College Archives highlight the extent to which the rebellion left Trinity destitute, with the Provost fleeing to England and the College losing access to revenues from its lands in Ulster, the epicentre of the rising. Trinity also quartered soldiers during the rebellion. While meant to aid in the defense of Dublin and the Pale, the presence of troops represented another financial drain on the University, which was supposed to pay the soldiers out of its own dwindling finances. This prompted the Vice-Provost, Fellows and Scholars to petition the Lords Justices and Council asking for recoupment of expenses (TCD MUN P/1/329). Students were also pushed to the brink of starvation in holding a continuous watch for the safety of the University. Their plight was outlined in another petition (TCD MUN P/1/334). The College’s petitions to Dublin Castle did not go unheeded. The government recognized that while the rebellion required defensive measures be taken, it could not risk the closure of the University, which was still viewed as central to the Crown’s rule of Ireland.
![Petition from the students to the Lords Justices and Council, [? June 1642] (TCD MUN P/1/334)](https://i0.wp.com/www.tcd.ie/Library/manuscripts/blog/wp-content/media/MSS/MUN-P-1-334-199x300.jpg?resize=243%2C360)
Trinity thus played comparable roles in the risings of 1641 and 1916. Both times the College quartered troops in an effort to subdue rebels, and both times the welfare of the College was considered crucial to the governing of Ireland and indeed, the preservation of imperial designs.
Salvatore Cipriano, Jr.
Ph.D. Candidate
History Department
Fordham University
The 7th conference of CERL’s (Consortium of European Research Libraries https://www.cerl.org/) European Manuscript Librarians Expert Group, hosted by the 
Library of Trinity College Dublin will take place 25-27 May 2016.
The primary aims of the Group are to act as a forum for curatorial concerns, and to enhance understanding and practical cooperation among curators across Europe. The conference will focus on these themes:
Commemorations and Anniversaries; Materiality; Post-digital issues and concerns.
Draft programme:
Wednesday 25 May, 1315 – 2000
Reception in Old Library with Book of Kells and exhibition of treasures
Thursday 26 May, 0930-1900
Reception at Royal Irish Academy and viewing of early medieval Irish manuscripts. Conference dinner, 1930
Friday 27 May, 0915-1200, private visits to Marsh’s Library and the Chester Beatty Library
FURTHER PAPERS WILL BE ADDED. FULL INFORMATION AND BOOKING FORM WILL FOLLOW SHORTLY.
Caoimhe Ní Ghormáin
In 1928 the Hall of Honour, which acts as the entrance to the 1937 Reading Room, was officially inaugurated. It was built to house the Roll of Honour, the names of Trinity staff, students and alumni who lost their lives in the First World War. On 26 September this year a specially-commissioned memorial stone will be unveiled on the plinth in front of the building to commemorate those whose names are inscribed within.
The Library began planning a new reading room before the War. In 1918 it was decided to build the portico first to serve as an immediate memorial to those who had died. The whole building was designed by architect Sir Thomas Manly Deane (1851-1932); it was one of the few architectural works he undertook after the death, at Gallipoli in 1915, of his son Thomas. The building work was overseen by John Good and the carving of the names was the work of a Mr. Harrison. The Reading Room itself was finished in 1937.
It had always intended to have some additional sculptural element on the central plinth in front of the Hall but this was never completed. The College Archives, which are kept in the Library, contain the drawings for the Hall, and the correspondence with the architect in which he discusses the addition of a sculptural element.
The Hall of Honour was officially opened by the Vice-Chancellor Lord Glenavy in the presence of Provost E. J. Gwynn and invited guests. A two-minute silent black and white film of the event, by British Pathé, may be see on YouTube
In 2014 Provost Patrick Prendergast decided that one of the key Decade of Commemorations events would be the commissioning, installation and unveiling of a memorial stone, to be placed at the front of the Hall of Honour, drawing attention to nature of the building behind it. Sculptor Stephen Burke accepted the commission and, in consultation with the Hall of Honour Memorial Stone committee, undertook to produce a Portland stone with the following text:
Tionscaíodh an Halla Onóra sa bhliain 1928 in onóir mball foirne, na mac léinn agus na gcéimithe de chuid Choláiste a fuair bás sa Chéad Chogadh Domhanda. Cuireadh críoch leis in 1937 le tógáil seomra léitheoireachta nua don leabharlann.
The Hall of Honour was inaugurated in 1928 in honour of the staff, students and alumni of the College who died in the First World War. It was completed in 1937 by the addition of a new reading room for the Library.
The unveiling of the Hall of Honour Memorial Stone will begin at 11.00 in Front Square and will be followed by a reception in the Dining Hall. All are welcome; please register your intention to attend here.
Jane Maxwell
