A very short blog post today, just to share a preview of my upcoming talk for the Hackney History Festival. I'll be speaking on Sunday 10 May 2026 at 3 pm in Sutton House (2-4 Homerton High Street, London E9 6JQ), one of the few Tudor mansions still existing in London today. Tickets are selling fast but as of today, you can still book tickets (£3) for my talk.

Seeing #SnaG26 social media posts in March for Seachtain na Gaeilge [Irish Week], I decided to revisit my research to find evidence of how long Ireland's native tongue Gaeilge has been present in London's past. I hope you enjoy this chronological timeline which demonstrates just how much the Irish lanuage in London has always been about more than pub signs promising Céad míle fáilte [A hundred thousand] & Ceol agus craic [music & fun]!

An underground car park on Virginia Street, London E1 today marks the spot where the eighteenth-century Irish population of Wapping and Whitechapel used to discreetly attend religious services in a Roman Catholic mission chapel.

This plaque on the side of Newington Green Primary School records the presence of one of Stoke Newington’s leading intellectual dissenters – that pioneering champion of women’s rights, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797). For two years, she tried to earn a living by running a girls’ school on this site. When the school failed, she worked in Ireland as a governess – an experience which influenced her groundbreaking work, A Vindication of the Rights of Women.

View of the front of the old Haymarket Theatre, taken down in 1821, by unknown artist (1820 Etching). Image source: © The Trustees of...

What connected Ireland's great dynastic Norman family, the Butlers, with the most fashionable urban development in 17th-century London?