Provost Linda Doyle led an event marking Remembrance Sunday ceremony on campus yesterday, November 14.
A service was held in the Chapel in Front Square, overseen by the College chaplains, after which the provost led a procession to the Hall of Honour Memorial Stone at the entrance to the 1937 Reading Room, where she laid a laurel wreath. She was joined by Vice-Provost Orla Shiels.
The provost then recited the Ode of Remembrance from Laurence Binyon’s 1914 poem For the Fallen.
The commemoration takes place every year on the second Sunday in November, the Sunday nearest to Armistice Day. It is held “in remembrance of those who lost their lives” from Trinity during the First World War.
The Hall of Honour was built in 1928 to commemorate the 471 Trinity students, staff and alumni who were killed during the war. It forms the entrance to the 1937 Reading Room, which was built nine years later. At the time of the war, Trinity’s total student population was less than 2,000.
The Memorial Stone was added in 2015, and unveiled by then-Provost Patrick Prendergast. He said that “students and visitors should be made aware of the purpose for which [the Hall of Honour] was built”.
Other records of Trinity’s links to the First World War can be found around campus. The School of Engineering has portraits of its members who were killed in the war displayed in the Museum Building, and the College Historical Society has records in its library of Trinity students who died.
