Recording now available for 'The Reed Celtic Cross: 1000 years of Irish history in Abney Park Cemetery'
Too much life "stuff" has meant my Irish London history research has been on the backburner for much of this year. But I'm delighted to be able to share - belatedly - this recording of my talk for the 2026 Hackney History Festival. That took place 10 May 2026 in the beautiful and historic setting of Sutton House (2-4 Homerton High Street, London E9 6JQ), one of the few Tudor mansions still existing in London today.
Featured locations:
The Reed Celtic Cross: from Kilkenny to Stoke Newington
Entering Abney Park Cemetery from Stoke Newington Church Street, one of the most striking memorials you see is a massive, intricately carved, and now Grade II-listed, Celtic Cross. Created in Kilkenny by the Irish monumental sculptor Edward O’Shea (1853-1910), it memorialises two sons of Hackney’s first MP Sir Charles Reed (1819-1891).
But this Celtic Cross is much more than just an example of the funerary art popularised by the late nineteenth-century Celtic Revival. O’Shea’s creation and Hackney’s Reed family combine to tell us a story of Ireland from the ninth to the nineteenth century, taking in the Plantation of Ulster, the first New Testament printed in old Irish script (Cló Gaelach), Dissenting Protestant missions to Ireland (sometimes known as 'the Bible War'), and more.
The Celtic Cross became an enormously popular style of gravemarker during the later period of the Celtic Revival, a cultural movement which increasingly influenced jewellery, sculpture, art and literature from the mid-nineteenth cenury onwards. At the same time, the artform in Ireland became one of the symbols of the resurgent Irish nationalist movement of the late nineteenth century.
And yet, as the back story to the Reed Cross reveals, this artform was still being chosen in the late nineteenth by Irish Catholics and Protestants alike as a grave marker for their loved ones - whether in Ireland or Britain.
Blog sources & further resources
2026 Hackney History Festival
You can see recordings of many of the fascinating talks given at the 2026 Hackney History Festival on the festival YouTube channel here.
Celtic Crosses in Kilkenny
The Journal of the Kilkenny Archaeological Society was a key source for researching this talk, especially these two articles:
Cló Gaelach / Old Irish printing in London
If you contact the St. Bride Foundation (14 Bride Lane, Fleet Street, London EC4), you can ask to see the archival materials they hold for Talbot Baines Reed (1852-1893), one of the men memorialised on the Reed Celtic Cross.
The Foundation contains his research into the history of printing using the Cló Gaelach / Old Irish typeface and his library, which includes the 1681 edition of the New Testament in Irish, Tiomna Nuadh ar dTighearna agus ar Slanuigheora Iósa Criosd printed at Ave Maria Lane, London EC4.
Reading the Celtic Cross today
Dr Megan Harvey has published a thought-provoking reflection on how and why the original medieval Celtic Crosses on the island of Ireland have become politicised in the wider context of 'the Troubles'.
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