Church of Ireland Gazette (1915) digitised

The weekly editions of the 1915 Church of Ireland Gazette has now been made fully accessible online by the RCB Library. The 1915 editions add to those already available for the years 1913 and 1914, enabling further analysis of various aspects of the momentous changes that occurred in Ireland and now being marked in the Decade of Commemorations.

Among the highlights of the 1915 editions is the Gallipoli Campaign by the Allied forces which began on Turkey’s Gallipoli Peninsula on 25 April 1915, (and would continue for over 8 months until 9 January 1916). Five days after it began, the Gazette edition for Friday 30 April 1915 was published. Its by now weekly column “The War Week by Week” (narrating the latest news on the war) carried an interesting analysis of the operation to attack German and Ottoman naval vessels at sea, and land British and French troops on both sides of the Dardanelles Straits (of vital strategic importance as the main sea route into the Russian Empire).

The contents of the Gazette provide an invaluable insight to the opinions and attitudes of members of the Church of Ireland through changing times. Written and read by lay and clerical members of the Church north and south, access via the online search engine brings to life at the touch of a button how unfolding political events in Ireland and abroad were communicated to and received by members of this significant minority community on the island one hundred years ago.

The 1915 editions have not only been digitised by the RCB Library but they are also fully searchable. For further information about the Gazette’s news items and the project undertaken by the RCB Library, visit the library’s ‘archive of the month’ section here.