Come Here To Me!

The building today.

The Trinity College Dublin ‘Post Graduate Reading Room’ has a long history, with the structure dating back to 1928 with the erection of a ‘Hall of Honour’ for Trinity men who gave their lives in the Great War, added to on July 3rd of 1937 with the reading room opened by President de Valera. It’s a beautiful building, one of the most unusual in the city, but easy to miss as you take the shortcut through Trinity College Dublin.

The Weekly Irish Times, July 1937

As early as 1919, newspapers were reporting on meetings of “past and present members of the Dublin University” which aimed to promote the idea of a permanent war memorial at the college to those who had fallen during the Great War. Following a meeting in early November of 1919, The Irish Times noted that the Lord Chancellor proposed a resolution which noted ‘That it is desired to promote a College War Memorial of a permanent character, and that the names of members of the University who fell in the Great War may be kept in honour and remembrance’.

Money was raised from a variety of sources, including graduates of the institution, and by the summer of 1920 discussions had moved onto what form of memorial would be most appropriate. A resolution was adopted by the committee responsible for the memorial which read: “That,as at present advised, the executive committee are of opinion that the College War Memorial should be a dignified building in proximity to the West End of the Library to be used as a reading room for students and graduates.”

Of course, all this talk of a College War Memorial was occurring at a time of national rebellion, a rebellion from which Trinity College Dublin couldn’t hide. A tragic incident would occur at the college for example in early June of 1921. The college, steadfastly loyal, was host to a cricket match in connection with Warriors Day which saw the ‘Gentlemen of Ireland’ take on the ‘Military of Ireland’ on June 3rd. The IRA saw this as a legitimate target and opened fire from the railings of Nassau Street, which tragically resulted in the death of Kate Wright, a young student at the college. Kate was only 21 at the time.

The Irish Independent reports on the shooting at Trinity.

It was November of 1928 before the grand permanent College War Memorial would be unveiled, with the honour falling to ‘Lord Glenavy’, the Vice-Chancellor of the Dublin University, a one time member of parliament and appointed Lord Chief Justice in 1916. The building was to commemorate the 463 Trinity College Dublin men who died in the Great War. A large assembly of students and staff gathered for the opening of the Hall of Honour, and witnessed the Memorial Committee handing the War Memorial over to the care of the Provost of the University. Below is the War Memorial as shown in The Irish Times of January 10th 1929. The paper looked at the building in some detail as part of their ‘Building and Reconstruction’ feature, noting that: “The building is in the Doric style of architecture. It is raised on a platform approached by a flight of seven stone steps….The hall is about 36 feet long with a staircase on one side leading to the future reading room….The names of the fallen are inscribed in gold letters on five statuary marble panels.”

In 1937, to the tune of £25,000, the new Reading Room was finally ready to open. Ironically, it was a vetaran of the 1916 rising who was to open the Reading Room attached to the College War Memorial, in the form of President de Valera. In his speech the President talked of Thomas Davis, a graduate of the college, quoting his words: “Beside a library, how poor are all the other greatest deeds of men”

It was undoubtedly symbolic of changing times at the institution that Dev should open the new Reading Rooms, and that he should arrive to the sound of the Garda band playing the national anthem!

Clever advertising in the Independent following the 1937 opening of the Reading Room!

One thing which baffles Dubliners about the Post Grad Reading Room today are the letters NIKH above its doors.The letters NIKH on the front is the name of the Greek goddess of victory. It’s a beautiful building with a complex history, but easy to miss, dwarfed today by the architecture behind it.

When you’re strolling through Trinity, for another piece of unusual ‘Great War’ era history, pop around to the cricket pitches and you’ll find a monument to a young British soldier buried at Trinity College during the 1916 uprising, Arthur Charles Smith of the Royal Hussars.

NIKH

Last week, I posted a link to my ‘Storymap’ contribution, which was a look at what I consider the most unusual military grave on Dublin, that of the horse Vonolel. On the day I filmed it, I noticed an old copy of ‘The Navy and Army Illustrated’ from 1898 on eBay at a very low price. I couldn’t resist snapping it up. The frontpage below shows Vonolel with ‘The Right Hon. Field-Marshal Lord Robers V.C, K.P etc.’ (phew!) upon him, and there’s a brief feature on Vonolel inside which I’ve scanned up too.

The story of Vonolel’s life, death and burial:

The image above is undoubtedly one of the iconic Dublin snapshots, showing The Wicklow, which was carrying cattle, suspended over Hatch Street having smashed through the buffer stops and even the outer station wall. The train has left from Enniscorthy earlier in the day, filled with cattle bound for the Dublin Metropolitan Market. On board too were driver Walter Hyland, guard Robert Doran and fireman Peter Jackston.

The Irish Times report of the following day gave a great account of the dramatic scenes, noting that:

All went well with the train until it was approaching Harcourt Street Station, at half-past four o’clock, when Hyland, it is believed, found he could not get his brakes to act, owing to the slippery nature of the wheels and rails combined with the fact that the train was very heavy. Speed could not be slackened, and the engine with its heavy load dashed through the station to the great alarm of the people on the platform, who saw that an accident of a serious nature must result, nor were they mistaken.

The train dangled 30 feet above Hatch Street, but thankfully there was no loss of life as a result of the crash. Hyland, the driver from Bray, was sadly to need his trapped arm amputated following the accident. 29 wagons made up the trains load, and passengers looked on as it continued towards the buffers. James Scannell noted in his article The Train Now Standing Over Hatch Street for the Dublin Historical Record journal that fireman Peter Jackson, upon realising the train was not going to stop, jumped off the locomotive footplate prior to the collision and avoided injury.

Scannell’s article concludes by noting that both Hyland, and The Wicklow, would recover from their ordeal.

When he recovered from his ordeal Driver Hyland return to work with the company and served until the 1930’s as a goods checker in Bray. The locomotive ‘Wicklow’ was repaired and returned to traffic, continuing in service until 1925 when it was assigned No 440 by the Great Southern Railways and was withdrawn in 1929.

Today, it’s a different rail network that makes its way up Harcourt Street of course with the Luas running in front of what was Harcort Street Station. The line from Harcourt Street was closed in 1958. The Odeon, a restaurant and bar, occupies the space today.

For years afterwards, it was said Dubliners would jokingly ask ‘does this train go through Hatch Street?’ in reference to the crash. On an interesting aside, one of the regular club nights in the Pod venue on Harcourt Street was titled Trainwreck!

Sold! The end of an era.

In Sheehy-Skeffington, and not in Connolly, fell the first martyr to Irish Socialism, for he linked Ireland not only with the little nations struggling for self-expression, but with the world’s Humanity struggling for a higher life – Sean O’Casey.

A plaque connected to the 1916 rising, but often overlooked, is that to Francis Sheehy-Skeffington inside what is today Cathal Brugha Barracks. Feminist, pacifist, vegetarian,journalist and activist, Francis was married to Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, undoubtedly one of the most celebrated feminists in Irish history herself. His death during the rebellion is one of the most tragic episodes of the week, as Francis was not a participant in the rising, but rather had gone to the city on April 25th with the aim of attempting to establish a ‘Citizens Peace Patrol’, to prevent more scenes of looting and criminality among Dubliners following the breakdown of law and order.

The plaque was unveiled on April 1 1970 by Nora Connolly O’Brien, daughter of James Connolly, in the presence of Senator Owen Sheehy-Skeffington, son of Francis, and others. It was sculpted by Gary Trimble, and includes an inscription bearing the words of James Cousins:

‘For whom no power of pride e’er awed
Whose hand would heal where sharp it fell
Smite error on the throne of God
And smile of truth though found in hell.’

Owen Sheehy Skeffington and Cathal O'Shannon view the memorial in 1969, when it was still being completed.

Writing in June of 1916, Padraic Colum noted in the pages of Emma Goldman’s Mother Earth paper:

I shall remember Francis Sheehy-Skeffington as the happiest spirit I ever knew. He fought for enlightenment with a sort of angelic courage, austere, gay, uncompromising. Since he wrote his student pamphlet on Women’s Liberation he was in the front of every liberalising movement in Ireland. He was not a bearer of arms in the insurrection- he was a pacifist…..But Skeffington is dead now, and the spiritual life of Ireland has been depleted by as much of the highest courage, the highest sincerity and the highest devotion as a single man could embody.

Francis was a well known feminist, having co-founded the Irish Citizen feminist paper in 1912, and adopting the surname of his wife, Hanna Sheehy, upon their marrying. He had been involved with the Irish Citizen Army upon the foundation of the workers army, but left when he felt the organisation to be at odds with his pacifist ideology, i.e moving from a purely defensive role towards militarism. He had attended University College Dublin, where he counted James Joyce among his friends, and was well known and indeed liked in the college on a social level, even becoming auditor of the College L&H (Literary and Historical Society) in 1897.

Francis and Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington

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The Viking. (‘A guide to some of Dublin’s pubs and restaurants’, 1970)

The Viking Inn, at 75 Dame Street, predated The George as being Dublin’s first ‘exclusively gay bar’. Situated just beside The Olympia Theatre, the pub was taken over and renamed Brogan’s Bar in the early 1990s.

The earliest (newspaper) records show that 75 Dame Street operated first as a surgery for a ‘mechanical dentist’ by the name of John Egar in the 1850s. Remodeled as a public house it was known as O’Brien Bros. (1920s), Kerins (1940s), McCabes (1950s), Leonards (1960s/1970s), The Crampton Court (late 1970s), The Viking Inn (1979 – 1987), The City Hall Inn (1989 – 1993) and finally Brogan’s Bar (1993 – present).

The Viking was the first bar in the city to be owned by a gay proprietor and to be opened specifically as a gay bar. It closed in 1987, shortly after The Parliament (now the Turks Head) opened and a full two years after The George first set up shop.

The Viking Inn for sale. The Irish Times, 11 Aug 1987.

Poster John K. on gaire.com remembers:

Because it was beside the Olympia there were many amusing incidents when straight people, especially from the country, went in and quickly began to feel very uncomfortable … The Viking was a great spot. I first went in there around 1980 (and) I have no recollection of any Garda harassment.

Fourcort recalls plucking up the courage to visit the place for the first time:

One night in the early eighties, I walked the entire length of Dame St. about 20 times trying to get up the courage to push in through the door of the Viking. A couple of drag queens cottoned on to me at one stage and started laughing at me. Eventually, I just forced myself in, got a pint (I never drink pints, I just thought I could make it last, and not have to move again), and went and hid down the back.

There are lots of aspects to Dublin’s LGBT culture that I’d like to cover in the future including the four-storey gay Hirschfeld Centre (1979 – 1987) in Temple Bar, Sides D.C. (now The Mercantile) on Dame Lane, the legendary acid house nightclub which started out as a gay club and the tragic events  surrounding the 1982 murder of Declan Flynn, a 31-year old gay man, in Fairview Park by a gang of thugs.

The Hirschfeld Centre opens. The Irish Times, 25 Apr 1979.

Veteran  campaigner and DJ Tonie Walsh has done fantastic work in trying to record the history of the LGBT community in Ireland, his long standing work cumulated  in the Irish Queer Archive which was donated to the National Library in 2008. The archive contains, amongst other things, ‘over 250,000 news clippings dating from the late 1960s and covering all the national print media, all lesbian/gay print media published in Ireland since 1974 and rrivate papers, journals and diaries (the earliest dating from 1947)’.

I was lucky enough to be asked to contribute a story to Storymap, which is a great project aiming to capture Dublin through its stories. Previously, we featured Shane MacThomais’ excellent contribution on the UVF man buried in Glasnevin for example, and there are stories on everything from street characters like Bang Bang to the ghosts that inhabit the Jervis Centre.

For me, there was only one story to tell, and that is the story of Vonolel, the loyal charger and friend of Field Marshall Earl Roberts. A small white arab pony, of Indian stock, he is buried in Dublin today. We first featured the story of Vonolel back in June 2010, and since then several people have got in touch to say they’ve paid him a visit. Next time you’re in the grounds of the Royal Hospital in Kilmainham, why not do the same?