We are pleased to announce that our Sunday School children have secured the 3rd place at the All Island Bible Quiz Competition 2019. The 55th Annual Bible Quiz Competition was organized by the Ceylon Bible Society. Two teams from Trinity College Sunday school took part after 15 long years absence. Team B was placed second at the provincial level, while team A secured the 3rd place. Master Devasiri Jayarathne was selected as the best performer at the provincial level. Entering this competition gave the students a great opportunity to demonstrate their talents and gain more knowledge about Christianity. The participants were: Team A (English medium) I.L.D. Jayarathna K.A.V.N. Perera I.M.N. Walpolapitiya J.S. Kottage Team B (Sinhala medium) S.D. Shalomith G. Samaeasinghe N.H. Mudunkotuwa A.K. Wijesinghe
The Trinity Sunday school children participated at the Kandy Zonal Bible Quiz competition conducted by the Kandy City Mission on 7th September 2019 at the Trinity College premises. Two U12 teams participated from Trinity and one team emerged champions while the other runners-up! Both teams managed to enter the 3rd round immediately after the 1st round as a result of their performance. Entering this competition gave the students a great opportunity to show their talents and knowledge. A total of 46 teams from schools and churches in Kandy zone and Central region participated at this competition. It should also be noted that Trinity took part in this competition after a gap of 15 years. As Trinity’s Sunday school children look forward to the Provincial competition, we wish them best for their future engagements and events.
The feast of the Holy Trinity Church and service of confirmation The annual Trinity Monday service took place on the 24th June this year at the College chapel. The Bishop of Kurunagala, Rt. Rev. Keerthisiri Fernando attended the service as the main celebrant while the following students were confirmed at the occasion: Jeremy Seth Kottage Vidath Perera Rahul Sivam Shane Ratnam Jason Navaratne Nathan Balasuriya Adithya Dias M. S. Kaballamuru Unless the LORD builds the house, the builders labour in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain. – Psalm 127:1 About Trinity Monday A church feast is an important day in the church calendar, it is where the congregation gives thanksgiving to God and for all who has laboured for the building of the church, with the Bishop as the main celebrant in the communion service and is often joined with the confirmation service. The church feast of “The Holy Trinity Church” (the Trinity College Chapel) is traditionally celebrated on ‘Trinity Sunday’, but because of its relationship with the College that has been built on the foundations of the Christian faith, it seems fitting to have the annual Bishop’s visit and the Church feast together on the following Monday which is called ‘Trinity Monday’. Trinity College Kandy, which bears the name of the Triune God, considers and holds this day as one of the most important days in the school calendar.
“Having heard the ringing of the bell on the hill, to call the worshippers for communal service and to announce times of daily prayer”, it is a familiar timbre to those of us at college and is a reminder to where the heart of this institution prevails. But what most of us both young and old would be unfamiliar with is the origins of The John Mcleod Campbell memorial tower which is sound to this day. In this article, you will learn how the bell tower of the Trinity College Chapel was constructed and how Trinity received a bell all the way from a church in Hemsby, England. A bell tower usually sits atop a church, rising upward from its roof and the bell is rung to signify the time for worshippers to gather for a church service. In some churches it is rung three times a day – at 6 am, midday, and 6 pm – summoning the Christian faithful to recite the Lord’s Prayer, or the Angelus, a prayer recited in honour of the Incarnation of God. The Trinity College Chapel is fortunate to have a beautiful bell tower built upon granite blocks along with a bell which rings to the pitch of the musical note G# (415.305 Hz). The John Mcleod Campbell memorial tower During the years the tower continued its slow growth and it continually added to the beauty of the Chapel, it was the last construction to be completed. We have been fortunate to obtain slabs of marble for the grilles of the tower windows and the slow painstaking task of carving the grilles to the same design is remarkable (A task which took a skilled artisan four months for each grille). The mechanism used The tower is in three compartments, with the ground floor used as the vestry. The middle compartment is a storage space where spare lamps, roof tiles and other chapel accessories are kept. The topmost compartment is used for the bell, fixed using four iron bars and a wheel fixed to a roller from which the bell hangs. A rope which drops down to the vestry is connected to the wheel. Top of the tower is structured to an open view with 12 small granite pillars – three standing on each of the four corners of the tower. It is interesting to note that the pillars aren’t carved. The ‘pekada‘ (lotus pendent bracket capitals of the Kandyan era) wood pieces fixed to each pillar are also not fully carved. The top of the tower gives a full majestic view of the Hanthana mountain range and Bahirawakanda area. The roof of the tower also includes a plywood ceiling. The magnificent vestry doors are made of ‘gammalu‘, a timber used only for sacred buildings; this timber was gifted to us by Mr C. Darmaratnam, an old boy of the school. The door handles and the fittings were another gift from an anonymous donor who used the Chapel for worship. The stone around the vestry door has been adorned with magnificent stone carvings of the Kandyan era such as the carving of ‘Kesara Sinha‘ on the lowermost corners of the vestry door, and also the carvings of ‘Hansa‘ above it. To all intents and purposes, the power and beauty of the lovely tower was ready to be offered to God, a poem in stone for God’s glory. The tower having being completed in 1970, for which Mr C. J. Oorloff was chiefly instrumental in building, was dedicated to Rev John Mcleod Campbell who was the Principal of College from 1924-1935 and is a prominent character in the history of Trinity. The bell from a church in Hemsby, Norfolk, England The bell tower having being built in the chapel lacked a church bell which was of grave importance, and so Rev Humphrey Whistler, who was the chaplain during that time told his nephew Rev Humphrey Squire about the College’s need for a bell. In 1970 Rev Squire visited Hemsby while on a holiday and found three bells on the floor of St. Mary the Virgin parish church which were dated 1660. The vicar told that the bells were never likely to be hung again in Hemsby asked Rev Squire to choose the biggest one of the three which were resting there on the floor. It is said that the parish has given it to us as a ‘missionary present from the people of Hemsby‘. It is estimated that this bell to be 359 years old. St. Mary the Virgin Parish Church The parish church, dedicated to St. Mary the Virgin, stands proud in the centre of the village of Hemsby. Historically some parts can be dated back to 1660 when the bells were hung. It was restored in the heyday of Victorian fervour when all the seating were installed. The pews are said to have been sawn from one oak tree grown in Filby, with the joinery undertaken in barn rooms. This church consists of a Chancel, Nave and a South Porch in the perpendicular style with a square embattled tower containing a clock erected in 1870. It is said that originally there were five bells in its belfry which were hung in 1660, the year of the restoration of Charles II. The belfry was removed as it was considered unsafe in the 1920’s, being eaten up with the beetle, and never rebuilt. One bell was left to strike the hours. Another was sold ,being cracked, and others rested in the Nave, waiting to be restored. We assume it was during this time period Rev Humphrey Squire visited St. Mary the Virgin Parish Church. The bell on board SS Mulbera Having raised the considerable amount of money necessary to obtain a legal faculty and for transport and crafting, the formalities of transferring the ownership of the bell and obtaining the faculty from the Diocese allowing it to be moved took some months. Rev Squire even wrote to the Department of Trade asking if an export license was necessary and was relieved to find it was not. He got the help
A Lenten meditation and Easter reflection in music, lessons and prayer On the evening of 31st March 2019, the Cross and Triumph of Christ took place at the Trinity College chapel with a wonderful rendition of sacred music, lesson and prayer. As of the Gospel it is clear that Christ gave up his life for all humankind. In order to inculcate this message in the hearts of many this spectacular event is arranged to do so by means of music, word of God, and the lit up surroundings. Also, it is specifically designed to show forth this holy message, by displaying rugged crosses on the hill side beside the Holy Trinity Chapel, creating a perfect atmosphere for this evening of meditation. The service commenced with Basil Harwood’s “Who is this a Man of Sorrows” being sung while the Choir and the Clergy processed from the West door. The service included music pieces of Thomas Tallis’ “O Nata Lux De Lumine” (O Light born of Light) sung as the first unaccompanied piece. J. S. Bach’s “O Sacred Head, sore wounded” a choir only piece sung after the Second lesson and another composition of J.S. Bach “Jesu, priceless treature” sung after the Third lesson. Debarah Govener’s “Alas! and did my Saviour bleed” was sung after the Fourth lesson; Handel’s “Surely, Surely He hath borne our griefs” from the Messiah sung after Fifth lesson; William Byrd’s “Ave Verum Corpus” sung after the Sixth lesson and this specific music piece was conducted by the Principal, Mr Andrew Fowler-Watt upon choir’s invitation. Martin Shaw’s “With a voice of singing” was sung after the Seventh lesson. The message in these compositions and the voices of the choir combined in proposing the main theme of the evening, the development of the loving purposes of god through the words of the holy bible. To mark the end of this holy service in Christ, Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus was sung by the choir as the final piece of the evening. This evening is not intended to be a “performance” but an inspirational moment for Christian hearts to meditate on God’s incarnation through Christ. The pattern and strength of the service derive from the Lessons and Meditations more than the music, where the main theme is the development of the loving purposes of God though the words of the bible. The center of the service is found by those who ‘go in heart and mind’ and who consent to follow where the story leads. The congregation is led through words of Meditation and Prayers following relevant Lessons and Music, and the service is themed on inner search of self and solemn appreciation of God’s infinite grace to mankind. Written by Dinil Jayasuriya Following is a full recording of the service:
Although the word “Lent” is often associated with penitence, fasting and abstinence, the word is actually derived from the old German word for springtime, a time of an explosion of life and light. And what event is more emblematic of light and love than Jesu’s Resurrection, the very culmination of Lent? Lent is not a new event for Trinity College. In the past Christians have conducted many Lent services, the 1949 Chaplain’s report states that there were Lenten services where the staff and students participated at 9.00 every Wednesday night in the ‘Chapel of the Light of The World’ (the Side Chapel). Holy Communion services were celebrated on every Wednesday and Friday at 7.00 in the morning. On one instance the chaplain stated the importance of Christian worship at Trinity like this: “It is difficult in an ‘open Church’ for young minds to be conscious of the presence of the Most High. So many external things distract them and make that concentration of the must attain, but we must attain it! That is the challenge of our chapel and we must accept that challenge and win through to that oblation of self which is Christian worship.” As we head into the “spring” this year, we look back from the supreme miracle of Jesus’s love, to the many small miracles of that occur in our everyday life. It is often our failing as Christians that we take the stories of miracles for granted without truly diving into them. What, for example, is the lesson that we learn from the feeding of the five thousand? When Jesus cursed the fig tree, was this an exhortation to kill all plant life? Or was there a deeper meaning, a reason why this small incident was written down? Are we as diseased as the ten lepers? Lazarus was raised from the dead. The Canaanite woman asked for crumbs from the Lord’s Table. How do these events affect us in our modern life? Join us this Lent every Thursday at the Chapel, from the 7th of March to the 11th of April at 5.45 in the evening, as we meditate and prepare ourselves for the most sacred time of the Christian year. We will celebrate the climax of this solemn preparation with the “Cross & Triumph of Christ” on 31st March 2019, 6.30 p.m. at the Chapel. Stay updated on our Facebook event page.
The annual general meeting of the Old Boys’ Association (OBA) was held on Saturday, 9th February 2019 at the College hall followed by the Old Boys’ service on 10th February at the College Chapel. According to Miss Valesca Reimann’s ‘History of Trinity College Kandy’ this tradition of having the AGM and the Sunday service dates back to 1893 when the first AGM was held on a Saturday, and included a cricket match, a tiffin and an evening service followed by a communion service on Sunday. The first AGM was attended by 33 members. The formation of the OBA started in 1892 when Mr Napier Clavering encouraged the creation such an association as there were many around the island who were proud to acknowledge Trinity College as their alma mater. The preliminary meeting of the Old Boys’ Association was held in December 1892, at the Principal’s bungalow. Principal was also made the President of the association, while Mr J.H. Sproule was made the Vice-President, and Mr J.W. Wirakoon, the Secretary and Treasurer. In 1918, the presidency was given to Mr T.B.L. Moonamale who was the first Old Boy to hold the post. The OBA celebrated its 30th anniversary on 19th August 1922, the date of the College’s 50th jubilee and when the original foundation stone for the Chapel was re-located to its current place. 2017 was the OBA’s 125th anniversary. From its inception in 1892, the Old Boys’ Association continued to grow, and currently it has branches worldwide, and many generous old boys continue to contribute to the school in various ways. The Colombo OBA undertook a major project equipping the kindergarten with state-of-the-art smartboards. The entire Junior School is expected to be equipped with smartboards by the end of 2019 through further efforts of old boys. As well as OBAs, we recently had many batches of old boys sponsoring some major projects in the school including the building the Solar Power system, refurbishing the library and making the Creative Learning Centre, and upgrading the College hall sounds and lighting system. And many other old boys (in batches, OB Associations, and as individuals) have pledged financial contributions towards the Trinity150 projects. As the Old Boys’ Association and the old boys together respectfully carries the responsibility of being custodians of Trinity’s values and traditions, we hope to see more old boys joining in to support the school in every possible way as Trinity steps into the glorious celebration of its 150th anniversary in few years time.
I was introduced to a mild mannered visitor to the Chapel by a school officer when I came in for choir practices today. I was told his surname and that he is an old boy. The visitor started by saying “If I were offered a ticket to go to a place that I loved, it would not be any other place in the world but the Trinity College Chapel. ” He soon went on talking about the choir and went on to describe the carol service in his days. Then he asked “Do the boys know ‘Where River Lake and Mountain Meet’, and would they sing it if I played it for them?” In reply I asked another question: “May I know your first name sir”? The Schiedmayer & Soehne, Stuttgart piano at the Trinity College Chapel (known to have been given by Lord Mountbatten) was played once again today by none other than Mr Errol Fernando after 60 years, while the Choir sang “Where River Lake and Mountain Meet”. It was a singular and unexpected delight for all of us as Mr Fernando spoke about how he came to be the accompanist of the Trinity College Choir. “It all started when Mr. Gordon Burrows sprained his ankle one day and could not come” he recalled. “The keyboard was bathed with my sweating fingers as I played for the first time and thought ‘never again’ at the end of it, and returned the book with shaky hands to Mr. Burrows”. But we all know that the rest of the story is different. Errol Fernando’s 80 year old fingers were light and nimble as he continued to play “Through All the Changing Scenes of Life” and “Once in Royal David’s City” while the Choir sang. Had Mr Fernando been present at the Founder’s Day Service earlier in the morning, it would have been a rare privilege to have him accompany us. Nevertheless, our joy was complete. Close to 100 young Trinitians (the Choristers and the novices who are being evaluated) listened wide eyed as he described his Choir days, showed the place he sat in the Choir, and told about the people at Trinity during his era. It was also a meeting of two eras as Mr Fernando, who is recorded as the first “accompanist” (with a separate choirmaster) from whom Mr Barnabas Alexander took over, met the present accompanist Mrs Sadhana Madasekera who took over from Mr Alexander. It was such an enriching 45 minutes that ended as he bid goodbye, saying to the boys “I wish I could take you all back to Melbourne with me”. – LT In video below is Mr Errol Fernando playing the piano while the choir sings, “Where River Lake and Mountain Meet”.
Article by Ranil Bibile KANDY! The very name is redolent of history, culture, festivals, dances, caparisoned elephants, and historic rituals. Ancient temples nestle in remote corners of this Cande Udarata – the old Kandyan Kingdom. The architecture, hipped roofs, frescoes, wood carvings and antiquities of these places of worship provide a veritable feast for the eyes, vying for attention with the surrounding vistas of cloud capped mountains, rivers, waterfalls and verdant plateaus. Kandyan architecture has a sublime beauty all its own, adroitly captured into words by the savant Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy when in 1905 he wrote his famous ‘Open Letter to the Kandyan Chiefs’, telling them that; “Architecture needs for its complete expression, the reasonable intelligent co-operation of all the arts; and in the days I speak of it did not lack this amongst the Kandyans; the stonemason and carpenter, the blacksmith and silversmith, the painter and potter, even the weaver combined to produce buildings of a lovely and harmonious character, part as it were of the very soil they grew from.” Dr. Coomaraswamy had been alarmed at the deterioration of the historic buildings in the Kandyan provinces and lamented that in “the repairs and alterations which have been made in ancient buildings in modern times…the incompetency attained is nothing short of appalling”. Thus it was that ninety years after the fall of the Kandyan Kingdom, not only were no new buildings of aesthetic value being put up, but the existing ones too were being ruined. Eighteen years after Dr.Coomaraswamy’s sad lament, the visionary Rev. Gaster at Trinity College Kandy decided to make a difference. In the year 1923, on the slopes of a hill having glorious views of the Kandyan peaks, work began on the construction of a building that would take more than fifty years to complete, and was designed and built for ‘eternity’, using materials and techniques from Lanka’s ancient and long forgotten era of great lithic monuments. This was to be the Chapel at Trinity College Kandy, a Public School for boys run by the Church Missionary Society and styled in the manner and traditions of the great Public Schools of England. The school was celebrating its fiftieth anniversary in 1923. Its centenary would pass before the chapel could be fully completed. No building of this scale and artistic grandeur, made of massive hand-carved granite columns, had been attempted in Sri Lanka for the better part of a thousand years, and none have been attempted since. At the beginning, when Trinity College decided to build a chapel, there was much discussion on the design, and various preferences were discussed: Byzantine, Classical and even Gothic. But the Rev L. J. Gaster, the then Vice-principal of the school, had the breadth of vision and the architectural background to conceive of a building that would, in his words, “express in stone the ideas and aspirations that were in the air and set out to build a thing of beauty, to build for posterity and to build, so to speak, in the vernacular”. Rev. Gaster had been to Polonnaruwa and had returned awe inspired. Not enough survived in that historic city to show what the buildings looked like in their entirety, but there was a wealth of detail, graceful pillars, massive and deeply moulded plinths and platforms, richly carved moonstones and balustrades, and majestic shells to show the scale on which the ancients had built and the skill with which they had decorated their buildings. It had made a deep impression on him. It was said at the time that, “As he stood amidst those remarkable ruins in all their grandeur, their massiveness and their loveliness, his thoughts went back through the centuries and saw these wonderful buildings in their former completeness with the citizens of that remarkable city gazing with pride and pleasure on those wonderful achievements in stone.” Though these achievements of Sri Lanka’s ancient civilization had been allowed to go to ruin, Rev. Gaster was convinced that no effort should be spared to inculcate in the young minds of generations of schoolboys to come, the appreciation of what is lasting, what is beautiful, and what inspires the mind to strive for greatness. He wanted to raise the most beautiful of buildings on the most beautiful of sites in the school. When arguments were made as to the impracticability of his dream and the costs of the venture, he would say that the traditions of Lanka demonstrated that the Palaces of the Kings had always been subsidiary to the Temples, and that it was on the Temples that all the resources of art and architecture had been lavished in the past. When work commenced on the chapel there were no contractors willing to tender for the contract, and no estimates could be prepared either. There were no written specifications for the kind of work that had to be done, nor were there any living souls with the requisite building experience. Rev. Gaster wanted to use the same old granite, hewn in blocks as gigantic as in the olden days. He envisioned a forest of stone pillars, fifty four in number, each sixteen feet high and two feet square, intricately decorated and capped with bell like carved wooden “pekadas”. They were to stand on a stone platform four feet high – “high enough for shelter, but not too high to look across, whether seated or standing, through the avenue of columns, to the sunset glow on the hills beyond”. The Sketches of Rev. Gaster: The completed works today: In an age before the availability of electric granite cutters, mechanized cranes, and heavy haulage trucks, the task of quarrying, shaping, and transporting the granite called for imagination and determination on an epic scale. Once a suitable quarry had been found about three miles away, the rock face had to be split with human muscle power aided by steel wedges, sledgehammers, and crowbars, as blasting would have merely shattered the rock into pieces. The monolithic pillar blocks had to be eighteen
A cool breeze swept Chapel on the serene hill, with it carried the merry ambiance of Christmas. The Chapel of Trinity College was surrounded with blazing lamps and at its entrance stood a Christmas tree and crèche. It was 11.00 pm on the 24th December and it was the third time that Trinity was holding a Midnight Mass in its very own Chapel, a new tradition started by the Principal Andrew Fowler-Watt. Smiles greeted each other as the nave started to fill. Many prominent figures such as Mr Lionel Perera, the Principal, Mr J. D. Wilson, and Mr Ravi Amarasekera were present. The the air was filled with joy and excitement as the congregation settled down. The Chaplain commenced the night with a prayer, and as the night advanced the prayers, speakers and hymns each gave wonderful advice. The hymns were backed by a group from the College Choir. The first hymn was ‘O little town of Bethlehem’. It was followed by ‘Silent Night’, ‘It came upon a Midnight Clear’, ‘Jesus, Good Above All Other’, and to conclude ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’. The service came to an end with the celebration of the Eucharist. Afterwards, the congregation wished each other with a warm “Merry Christmas!” and were offered Christmas cake and coffee outside the Chapel. Christmas eve had given way to Christmas day. Review by R.M.P.M. Ratnayake