Coming soon! More Irish London history at the 2026 Hackney History Festival
- N16Breda
- Apr 21
- 3 min read
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 here.
Do check out the rest of the great programme for that day here. Day passes are already sold out but tickets are still available for many of the individual talks and walks.
Featured locations:
Finding Ireland in the history of Stoke Newington
This is the third year of the Hackney History Festival and my third time speaking. It seems there really is no shortage of Irish connections to be found across all parts of Hackney!
This year, I've set myself the task of exploring one thousand years of the history of Ireland through the medium of a majestic Celtic Cross in Stoke Newington's Abney Park Cemetery. This was created by the Irish sculptor Edward O'Shea (1853-1910) in Kilkenny in 1893 and erected as a grave marker to memorialise two sons of Hackney's first MP, Sir Charles Reed (1819-1891).
Ireland's ancient High Crosses, Kilkenny, Protestant evangelical missionaries to Ireland, the Plantation of Ulster, early Irish language printing in Cló Gaelach type, and railways will all make an appearance.
You can read more about my talk in the 18 April 2026 issue of The Irish Post.
Blog sources & further resources
Hackney History Festival
You can see recordings of many of the talks given in 2025 and 2024 on the Hackney History Festival YouTube channel here.
My 2025 talk: "1851 Census: Who were the Irish in Hackney and Stoke Newington?"
The census of 1851 was the first to record place of birth, marital status and occupation for people living in Britain. The census that year also recorded a jump in London’s Irish-born population from 75,000 in 1841 to 109,000 in 1851, reflecting mass migration caused by An Gorta Mór, Ireland’s Great Famine of 1847-1852.
While London’s Irish population had long been concentrated in poor central districts like Whitechapel and St Giles in the Fields, a small minority lived in Hackney and Stoke Newington. And their census records - as workers, wives, clergy and institutional inmates - illuminate less familiar aspects of the Irish presence in Victorian London.
My 2024 talk: "When “the Irish Question” came to 1880s Hackney"
The late nineteenth-century debate about self-government for Ireland played out not just in the corridors of Westminster but also on the streets of Hackney. At the forefront of the Liberal campaign for Home Rule was South Hackney’s Irish-born MP Charles Russell, a political ally and legal defender of “the Uncrowned King of Ireland” Charles Stewart Parnell.
Following the 1885 General Election, the Irish Parliamentary Party led by Parnell held the balance of power in Westminster and the new electoral constituency of South Hackney had a new Liberal MP (1885-1894): the Irish lawyer and Home Rule advocate Charles Russell (1832-1900), later Baron Russell of Killowen.
Hackney’s strong Liberal presence and modest Irish electorate came together to deliver a vigorous campaign of support for Liberal Prime Minister William Gladstone’s (ultimately unsuccessful) efforts to legislate for Home Rule in Ireland. While still South Hackney’s MP, Russell was also a key player in a historic judicial inquiry where he successfully defended Parnell against false accusations made by The Times. Russell the lawyer was described as having “the same effect on a witness that a cobra produces on a rabbit”.
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