Senior member of Clare with dining rights in the late 1960s/early 1970s. Was involved with establishing the University Centre and University College (now Wolfson College).
Paul Mellon was born 1907 in Pittsburgh, he graduated at Yale in 1929 and then came to Clare College that year to read History. He graduated in 1931 and his father, Andrew Mellon, was given an Honorary Degree at the same ceremony. After his father died in 1937 he turned from his father's world of business and made philanthropy his extraordinary legacy. Over his lifetime, Mellon gave nearly a billion dollars to museums and other causes ranging from public health to the environment. In 2007 the College will celebrate the centenary of Paul Mellon's birth and the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the Mellon Fellowships. An exhibition has been mounted at the University Library.
Guy Vickery Pinfield was born in Assam, India on 21 October 1894 to Frank and Gertrude Pinfield. His father was a tea planter and his mother's brother Charles Simkins ran the Amguri Tea Estate at Assam.
His father died suddenly in January 1897 in Liverpool. On the 1901 Census, Guy was living with his widowed mother and sister at 43 Lansdown Place, Hove, Sussex. The same year, his mother married Patrick Russel and they later lived at Dane House, a mansion in Bishops Stortford.
He was educated at Marlborough College, Wiltshire from 1908 to Easter 1912 and entered Clare College in 1913. He was athletic and distinguished himself at rugby and played for Rosslyn Park RFC in south west London.
Wartime Service
He joined the Army when war was declared and received his commission on 15 August 1914 as a 2nd Lt in the 8th Kings Royal Irish Hussars.
By 1916, Pinfield was stationed at the Curragh and attached to the 10th Reserve Cavalry Regiment. When the Easter Rising began, he was sent to Dublin with reinforcements. Not far from Saint Patrick's Cathedral, he was mortally wounded, being among the first British officers (116 British soldiers) to lose his life during the Rebellion. His body was temporarily laid to rest within the grounds of Dublin Castle.
Unclaimed, his grave along with four others, lay forgotten until 1962. In 1963, his body was re-interred at Grangegorman Military Cemetery. A plaque is dedicated to Lieutenant Pinfield inside Dublin's Saint Patrick's Cathedral (Church of Ireland); the only plaque within the cathedral dedicated to an individual killed during the 1916 Rising. In 2011, Guy Vickery Pinfield was the subject of both an RTE presentation and an article in the "Irish Times" relating to a gold locket which had been sold at auction for £850, more than double its estimate. It had been worn by his mother and was engraved with his initials, his date of death and the Hussar's motto "Pristinae virtutis memories" (The memory of former valour).
Admitted to Clare in 1923, interested in aviation and car racing.
Matriculated at Clare, 1944.
Matriculated at Clare, 1965.
Richard Bennett matriculated in 1920 and graduated from Clare in 1924. He studied Natural Sciences.
He was the nephew of the well-known author Arnold Bennett and he later donated the c.600 letters that he received from his uncle to the UL. Richard Bennett was also a member of the 'Boot club', a college group founded through a mutual interest in 'the Boot' pub in Dullingham (see Volume 1). After leaving the College he held posts at Lever Brothers and later ICI.