Skip to main content

Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin

Menu Search

Tag: WWI

Posted on

Soldiering on

WWIThis Saturday, 12 July, Trinity College Dublin is playing host to the ‘WWI Roadshow’ in partnership with RTÉ Radio 1 and the National Library of Ireland. This consists of a series of events throughout the campus designed to explore Ireland’s role in the Great War. Of particular interest is a lecture to be given by Jane Maxwell, of the Manuscripts & Archives Research Library, entitled ‘Manage to exist and try and be cheerful’: sources in Trinity College Library’s Manuscript Collections for the History of the First World War. The talk will take place in the Long Room Hub at 10.15am and is part of a series of pop-up talks and lectures scheduled throughout the day.

In her talk Jane will cover subjects such as the logistics of warfare in Mesopotamia (which required the transportation of camels by boat and baking bread outdoors in the desert); Molly Childers’ charitable work in aid of Belgian refugees, among others, (for which she received the MBE); and drawings of the first occasion in history in which zeppelins, sea planes, submarines and ships of war were deployed together.

IMG_7715Also of interest is the exhibition, with the same name, curated by Aisling Lockhart, which has just been installed for the occasion in the Long Room. This exhibition showcases diaries, photographs, drawings and letters, belonging to servicemen and their families, which are housed in M&ARL.

The Department of Early Printed Books have curated a Francis Ledwidge display in the Berkeley Library for the Roadshow.

Saturday’s programme of free events also includes music, poetry and drama events in the Chapel, Great War-related history tours of the campus, cooking demonstrations of ‘the food of WW1’, and a ‘Last Cricket Match of Peace’. The day will finish with the final bugle call of ‘The Last Post’ and ‘Reveille’.

WWI dress medals MS-EX-12_063The World War 1 Roadshow forms part of Trinity’s engagement with the Decade of Commemorations celebrations. A new website has been launched outlining College’s activities marking the Decade of Commemoration.

Estelle Gittins

The talk ‘Manage to exist and try and be cheerful’: sources in Trinity College Library’s Manuscript Collections for the History of the First World War takes place at 10.15am on Saturday 12 July in the Long Room Hub, Fellows’ Square.

The exhibition ‘Manage to exist and try and be cheerful’ will be on show for the next two months in the Long Room, Trinity College Library.

Posted on

Ireland’s dead enigma: Francis Ledwidge

To coincide with the visit of the World War I Road Show to Trinity College on Saturday 12 July, there are new exhibits in the Berkeley Library foyer and the Ussher Orientation Space.

The Berkeley display case contains two holdings related to the war poet Francis Ledwidge. Born into a poor, rural family in Slane, Co. Meath, Ledwidge had to leave school at the end of the primary cycle to help earn money for his family – his father having died when he was five years old. From the age of thirteen he worked as a farm labourer and began to write poetry. His writing came to the attention of Lord Dunsany, who gave him great encouragement and wrote an introduction to each of his three volumes of poetry including Last songs which is now on display. Described as ‘our dead enigma’ by Seamus Heaney, Ledwidge held strong nationalist views with the events of the Easter Rising having affected him greatly. He fought with the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers and was killed at Flanders on 31st July 1917. In Two songs and Una Bawn, Ledwidge describes the way he felt when called to fight in the War.

The second exhibit shows the entry for Francis Ledwidge in Ireland’s memorial records 1914-1918. In July 1919, the Irish National War Memorial Trust was set up to establish a permanent memorial to the Irishmen killed in the First World War. A national fund-raising campaign generated donations of £42,000, of which about £5,000 was spent on collecting the records of those who had died and publishing their names in a monumental eight-volume work. The volumes were printed by Maunsell & Roberts in Dublin in a limited edition of one hundred copies, and the stained-glass artist Harry Clarke was commissioned to design decorative borders for each page, which are repeated throughout the volumes.

Ireland's memorial records
Ireland’s memorial records 1914-1918, Dublin: 1923

The World War I theme continues with a display of Irish fiction by Collection Management in the Orientation Space. Works on show by Sebastian Barry, Frank McGuinness and others, encompass the political climate of the time and the emotions of guilt and duty felt by the protagonist and their families. Equally illustrated by the authors are stories of friendships, love, lost ones and disjointed families against the backdrop of the continental and home divide.

 

….