Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
were skipping across to Continental Europe for an education and were becoming 'infected
with popery'. Trinity went on to become one of Europe's most outstanding universities,
producing a host of notable graduates - how about Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde and
Samuel Beckett at the same alumni dinner?
It remained completely Protestant until 1793, but even when the university relented and
began to admit Catholics, the Church forbade it; until 1970, any Catholic who enrolled
here could consider themselves excommunicated.
Front Square & Parliament Square
The elegant
Regent House entrance
on College Green is guarded by statues of the writer Oliv-
er Goldsmith (1730-74) and the orator Edmund Burke (1729-97). The railings outside are
a popular meeting spot.
Through the entrance, past the Students Union, are Front Sq and Parliament Sq, the lat-
ter dominated by the 30m-high
Campanile
, designed by Edward Lanyon and erected from
1852 to 1853 on what was believed to be the centre of the monastery that preceded the
college. According to superstition, students who pass beneath it when the bells toll will
fail their exams. To the north of the Campanile is a
statue of George Salmon
, the college prov-
ost from 1886 to 1904, who fought bitterly to keep women out of the college. He carried
out his threat to permit them in 'over his dead body' by dropping dead when the worst
happened. To the south of the Campanile is a
statue of historian WEH Lecky
(1838-1903).
