Cesca Chenevix Trench

Who was Cesca Chenevix Trench?

Cesca Chenevix Trench was an Anglo-Irish woman who became an Irish Nationalist illustrator. She adopted the Irish identity and took an Irish name Sadhbh Trinseach.

Cesca Chenevix Trench was born into an Anglo-Irish Protestant family. She grew up in a vicarage in Kent and even if her mother was a Unionist, she became an Irish nationalist. Trench's uncle Henry Butcher was a Unionist MP for Cambridge and they drew apart after 1910 when he did not support compulsory Irish language in the new National University. Her brother Reginald was also an officer in the Sherwood Foresters.

When Trench studied in Malvern boarding school in 1906–1908, she began to support Irish Home Rule in public. In 1908–1913 she lived in Folkestone but spent each summer in Ireland and went to a summer school there in 1911–1913. There she also met Diarmid Coffey, her future husband.

Trench's cousin Dermot – who committed suicide in 1909 – and her sister Margot were also Irish nationalists. She opened on account at Gleason in Dublin that sold only Irish products and swore off drink and tobacco unless they were manufactured in Ireland. When the new campaign for the Home Rule begun in 1912, Cesca and Margot collected signatures for a petition that all the Irish taxes should be lodged in an Irish treasury. They collected Irish folklore, customs and traditions.