Updated 22 August 2024: Thank you to the many reviewers of the website. In response to requests for more signposting to London locations and to assist with site navigation, I've now pinned this post to the top of the blog feed so it will always be visible there.
Work has started on the website's home page to make the different navigation options more obvious. You'll still have the choice of exploring the blog post stories chronologically in the context of the overall Timeline, diving into the blog post Categories (century, borough) and Tags, or just roaming around the map of blog locations. Thanks for your patience while this work is ongoing.
Growing up in Ireland, I learnt a lot in school history lessons about the presence of England in Ireland, very little about the presence of Ireland in England, and almost nothing about the presence of Ireland in London. London has been my adopted home for many years now and I'm fascinated by its history. I love stumbling across its connections with Ireland whether that's by reading history books, studying maps, exploring archives, learning from other people, and especially by walking the city streets and seeing what's there to be seen and what's no longer visible. I like to think of this as 'historical mudlarking'.
Mudlarking, the past, and writing history
If you've ever walked along the banks of the River Thames at low tide, you'll almost certainly have seen people mudlarking on the foreshore.* These amateur archaeologists are searching for physical traces of London's past in the form of objects which were lost in the river long ago and are now randomly deposited upon the shoreline by the tides. These pipes & tiles, beads & bones, coins and thousands of other things emerge from the water all jumbled up together. But close examination of individual objects can shed new light on different periods in London's past and so shape how the city's history is written.
*You need a license from the Port of London Authority to be a mudlark. If (like me) you don't have a license, you can still explore the foreshore as part of a guided mudlarking session.
When I first started paying attention to London's historical connections with Ireland, they appeared in similarly random ways. Like the day I noticed a striking green door in Guildhall Yard EC1 which turned out to be a leftover trace of the central role played by the City of London in the Plantation of Ulster from the early seventeenth century and why Derry was given the name 'Londonderry'.
For the last few years, I've been randomly sharing these snippets on X/Twitter as @N16Breda where I enjoy having online chats about what these stories might tell us about the many and various ways in which Ireland and Irish people have long been part of London's history. Now I want to delve into more of the detail of these stories - and hence this blog.
Blogging London's Irish connections - when and where
My ambition is to spark conversations about the multifaceted ways in which different places, people and things have connected London and Ireland between the 17th and 19th centuries. I've chosen this period for two reasons.
From the perspective of Ireland, it begins with wholesale English conquest of the island in the 1600s (what historians call the 'early modern period') and ends in the late 1800s (the 'modern period') when the campaign for Irish Home Rule became a political reality in Westminster.
And in London, this same period created the city layout that we still live in today. A key factor was the development of west London in the 1600s on land appropriated from the Church following the Protestant Reformation under the Tudor king of England Henry VIII (r. 1509-1547) - who was also the first English monarch to be declared King of Ireland in 1541.
You can see a high-level overview of key moments during the three hundred years from 1600 to 1900 on the Timeline. For a more detailed reflection about how London and its Irish connections changed during this time, see the About this project page.
London is huge and this history is incredibly rich. So this blogging project will begin by exploring connections with Ireland in just three of London's boroughs, each of which is associated with a very particular historical narrative.
Tower Hamlets - the home of the East End, immigrants, and labour politics.
Westminster - traditionally central London's seat of political and social power.
Hackney - a village originally on the outskirts of London and often known as a place that welcomed dissenters and radicals.
For a bird's eye view of where these connections between London and Ireland occurred in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, you can see the different locations on the Map page. You can also go directly to the Google MyMap here - that's the best way to explore the map if you're accessing this site from a mobile phone, especially if you're out and about in London.
A journey & a conversation
This history project is not setting out to tell you a neat chronological narrative of the presence of Ireland in the history of London. Instead I'm taking inspiration from the way the mudlarker's close study of the foreshore uncovers random finds which can be assembled to reveal different facets of London's past and how they relate to each other. In a similar way, I'm hoping to use snippets - often found randomly - about people, places, and things to draw out some of the many threads which make up the deeply entangled histories of London and Ireland. I'm especially interested in who was considered 'Irish' and what that meant in different places and times.
I hope you will join me on this journey into London's past and share your thoughts about what these stories might mean for how we can think about Ireland in the history of London. Are there historical snippets you've come across which we could make part of the journey together? Looking forward to responding to your comments below!
You can also get in touch with me directly via the Contact page, send me an email at irishlondonhistory@gmail.com, or follow @N16Breda on X/Twitter. You can find out more about me here.
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