Roofs and flags

This article was published in Trinity News on January 27, 2009, with the headline 'Rooms with a view', the seventh of the 'Old Trinity' columns.

Roofs and flags

I SPOTTED this remarkable photograph in the recently-published Our War: Ireland and the Great War, edited by John Horne and published by the Royal Irish Academy. The image shows men and women watching, from the roofs of Trinity College, a victory parade on Westmoreland Street. The parade, which took place on July 19, 1919, celebrated success in the Great War.

Perhaps there was no rule against accessing roofs in 1919, or an exception may have been made for the parade. But the modern DU Calendar is unequivocal: these days, “College roofs and attic spaces are out of bounds.”

The spectacle we see in this photograph may never be repeated, but regulations are occasionally ignored. Before the renovation of rooms in Parliament Square in 2006, several attic doors were unlocked, giving easy access to the roofs. In 2005, following a day’s drinking in College Park, I was lucky enough to be able to watch the St Patrick’s weekend fireworks sitting at the chimneys of number ten. The following year, a companion and I had a close escape from the porters when we were spotted boozing on the roof of number eight during Trinity Ball.

I would certainly not support allowing crowds of people unrestricted access to roofs. (Look at the chap sitting on the ledge of number seven – not safe!) But this picture highlights the contrast between those more relaxed days and our era of health and safety gone mad. Risk is an element of day-to-day life, but some apparatchiks’ refusal to acknowledge this leads to closed-off balconies, an excess of security, and less fun for all.

THE UNION FLAG flies above number seven in this photograph. I wonder what flag flew above Regent House that day, if any?

Trinity did not abandon the flying of the union jack in 1922. The college briefly considered flying a flag of the crowned harp, which appears on the university arms and on many sports clubs’ ties. But this idea was given up in favour of flying the tricolour on one side, the union flag on the other, with the college flag in the middle.

By the mid-1930s the flying of the union flag was considered provocative rather than anachronistic and it flew, officially, for the last time, half-staff, on the passing of King George V in 1936. Dubliners did not complain, but the Deputy Ulster King of Arms wrote to the college to point out the heraldic irregularity of the gesture.

When Germany surrendered on May 7, 1945, the union flag was seen again – this time as a result of student initiative. Some excited undergraduates gained access to the roof of Regent House and hoisted every flag they could get their hands on: among them the union jack, the Soviet flag, the tricolour and the stars and stripes. The union flag, for whatever reason, was above the flag of Ireland on the staff, and some members of an extremist political group, taking offence at this, burned a union flag on College Green. The students, probably for a laugh, burned an Irish flag above Regent House in response. Not unexpectedly, this led to anger on the streets, and it was a week before tensions in Dublin lifted.

Did Charles Haughey – a UCD student at the time – burn the union flag that day? An Irish Times obituary says so, as does Ian Wood’s Ireland During the Second World War. But McDowell and Webb do not make any mention of him.

DURING THE Students’ Union’s silly 2007 campaign to have the Irish tricolour flown over the college there was mention of flag protocol, but I have never encountered any in print.

I have noticed that when a foreign dignitary visits Trinity, the flag of Ireland flies above Regent House, the flag of the visitor’s country above number seven, and the impressively-large flag of Trinity College above number four. On Commencements days, the flag of the University Senate flies above Regent House. On St Patrick’s Day, the flag of Ireland flies above Regent House. And when a fellow passes away, the flag of Trinity College flies half-staff above Regent House.

But these are only observations: I do not know the specifics.

THANKS TO Kevin Cunningham, BA 2008, currently at Oriel College, Oxford, who sent me the following quote from Jonathan Bardon’s A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes. Students of Trinity College in the late eighteenth century, Bardon writes, “acquired a reputation for wild and debauched behaviour.” He continued:

“Sons of nobles and gentlemen for the most part, they strode about wearing gowns trimmed with gold or silver according to rank. Some could afford to dine at the Eagle Tavern, home of the notorious Hell-Fire Club, or risk a duel at Lucas’s Coffee-House on Cork Hill. Others would eat beefsteaks in The Old Sot’s Hole on Essex Bridge or mingle with the humbler classes in the ale-houses of Winetavern Street. Generally known as ‘bucks’, they were often eager to join fights in the narrow streets, wielding the heavy keys to their rooms as weapons.”

Today’s “bucks” are still fighting and drinking on Dublin’s streets. But these days it’s fists and feet only: plastic key cards are no use at all.