01.12.2014
RCB Library Archive of the Month – Lantern slide show of Boer War and Great War images online
For December, the RCB Library’s commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War continues with the online presentation of lantern slides relating to “The Great European War” and related items from the earlier Boer War which originated (before their transfer to the RCB Library, pictured right) in St Patrick’s Cathedral Deanery, Dublin, where they may have been used to inform contemporary audiences about these conflicts.
A selection of these slides formed part of the cathedral’s “Lives Remembered” exhibition (see this link http://www.stpatrickscathedral.ie/Lives-Remembered.aspx) which explores the Cathedral’s connections to that War and the cathedral’s solemn tradition of remembering lives lost or affected by war and conflict ever since through its annual Remembrance Services. This is first time however that all 54 slides have been featured online together for a worldwide audience.
The “Great European War” and related Boer War slides collectively form part of a bigger collection of lantern slides that were transferred from the Deanery (where successive deans of the cathedral have lived) into the library during the past 18 months. As regular followers of Archive of the Month will know, this is not the first collection of lantern slides to come to light recently in a Church of Ireland deanery. In 2012, the library took custody of almost 300 slides from Killaloe deanery in county Clare, which cover a wide range of topics including the Church’s mission in Chota Nagpur India, available here http://ireland.anglican.org/about/135 and of a tour in Palestine, available here http://ireland.anglican.org/about/136 as well as rare shots of the Industrial Exhibition held in Dublin in 1907 and other varied snapshots around Ireland over 100 years ago http://ireland.anglican.org/about/174 – all of which are digitally re–mastered and displayed online at the links above.
Like the Killaloe collection, the St Patrick’s collection reveals the important role that the church and church personnel played in disseminating visual materials in times past when photography was a relatively privileged and rare occupation. Since its acquisition by the library it has been arranged, catalogued and listed into five main groups, of which the War images are one component.
The online slide show speculates how such a collection might have ended up at St Patrick’s and demonstrates how they were used as contemporary educative tools to inform people what was going on in an otherwise limited visual era. In church halls, churches and cathedrals, audiences would gather to be brought up to date with on the realities of warfare, and specifically the progress of the Allied advance on mainland Europe between 1914 and 1918 and related events.
The lantern slide show is available at this link <www.archdrawing.ireland.anglican.org>.
The Church of Ireland’s short commemorative film about the Great War and ten letter writers from the trenches, The Boys From East Belfast, continues at this permanent link <www.ireland.anglican.org/about/196>.
The Archive of the Month is available at http://www.ireland.anglican.org/library/archive