Postcards a unique window on past

This article was published in Trinity News on 11 November, 2008, the fourth 'Old Trinity' column.


Postcards a unique window on past

THE SIMPLE postcard has served its purpose well since its invention in the 1860s. Postcards remain, even in this age of digital communication, extremely popular. But apart from their primary function, they have also served to create a pictorial history, often depicting scenes found nowhere else.

Postcards of the main facade of Trinity College are in abundance, from those printed early last century and before to those available in shops around Dublin today. But other interesting and more obscure images of our college have been printed and, message appended, sent around the world.


King George V spent six days in Dublin in July of 1911, and he was welcomed to Trinity by the Chancellor of the University, the Earl of Iveagh. The postcard shown records the king on the steps of the Dining Hall, in a photograph which must have been taken from the roof of the chapel. Interestingly, the photo is by Lafayette, the same company which now takes photographs at commencements. The king wished the then newly-formed DU Officers’ Training Corp success and said that Trinity College “will, I am sure, always continue to hold its high place in the estimation of both Ireland and the world.”


The postcard of the University Philosophical Society’s conversation room is postmarked 1906. It is not the same room today’s students repair to after debates in the chamber of the Graduates’ Memorial Building; it is the current billiards room. One has to wonder what became of the furniture, books, bookcases and framed pictures which are seen in this picture.

The card titled “A ‘Junior Freshman’s’ Entrance Examination” shows a man, with his son, enquiring about admission to the college. It would be generous to simply say that the joke is in the contrast between the local father-son pair and the educated don. Rather, it seems that this card is positively anti-Irish. It dates from the first decade of the last century.

The oldest card shown here, “The Quadrangle, Trinity College”, shows a familiar view of Parliament Square, taken from Regent House. But there is one curious difference: the GMB has not yet been built (it was completed in 1904), and the old “Rotten Row” can still be seen to the left of the Campanile. The card’s author is forced to write his message on the side of the card with the picture in accordance with early postal rules.

The selection of postcards of our college available these days are not always particularly diverse or special, but the recent postcard of Lorraine Lawlor’s drawing of a worse-for-wear Trinity Ball couple outside Front Gate is an example of the potential for postcards to continue to depict Trinity in interesting ways.

THE COMMUNICATIONS Office’s website tells us that the bachelor in theology degree is to be replaced with the master in theology degree. The old BTh, which was introduced in 1988, will be abolished in favour of the new “MTheol” (do they mean MTh?). But no mention is made of the hood. Will the BTh hood – black, lined with black, edged with purple – be used, now with the masters’ gown? Or is there a new design?