Liverpool Irish Famine Trail: Revive

By Liverpool Irish Festival

Historical, bold and purposeful, Liverpool Irish Famine Trail: Revive revisits the establishment of the Liverpool Irish Famine Trail; reviving sites of importance and detailing Ireland’s influence on Liverpool.

In 2021 Liverpool Irish Festival began revitalising the Liverpool Irish Famine Trail, originally established in the 1990s. Documenting the start of the project, Liverpool Irish Famine Trail: Revive describes the first year of research, undertaken by a dedicated volunteer History Research Group and the wrap-around development of the project. It considers the recent chronology of the Trail and the complex history that led to its creation, based on the origin story of The Irish Famine and its effects on Liverpool and the region. Revive is a call to action to revisit heritage, increase interest and find understanding in a period of time that continues to affect people and place today.

Marking Stage One/Year One -of what is likely to be a five stage, five-year plan- Revive celebrates the work of the Liverpool Great Hunger Commemoration Committee and honours The National Lottery Heritage Fund, which funded the work. Revive explores a process of reflection, rejuvenation, remembrance and reconnection.

Illustrating 15 sites of historical importance, and giving voice to some of the lead activists in the Trail’s development, readers will learn about Liverpool’s unparalleled connection with Ireland. Liverpool Irish Famine Trail: Revive documents an ambitious adventure, commemorating the lives of almost 1.24million people and the lasting impact many of them have had on Liverpool.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Liverpool Irish Festival
• Release date: Jun 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781739664015

Liverpool Irish Festival

Emma Smith is Artistic Director and CEO of the Liverpool Irish Festival since 2016 to the time of writing (2022). Along with a volunteer History Research Group, a National Lottery Hertiage Fund grant and the History Research Group lead, John Maguire (also of Arts Groupie CIC), Emma and the Festival have led on the work that has developed this book, with Emma serving as editor and compositor of the stories within.Liverpool Irish Famine Trail: Revive presents the first book -in what we hope will be a collection of books- marking the redevelopment, growth and community activity that brings the Liverpool Irish Famine Trail in to common use, serving as a cultural and historical asset for the city and the people with whom it provides connection.

Book preview

Liverpool Irish Festival: Revive

NCX Content List

NCX Content list

ebook introductory note

Publication notes

Revitalising the Liverpool Irish Famine Trail

The Irish Famine memorial and the Trail

Context

Coiste Chuimhneachan An Ghorta Mhóir Learpholl/ The Great Famine Commemoration Committee Liverpool

Repositioning the Trail for the 2020s

How the research took place and with whom

Branding

Timeline: Liverpool 1701-1905

Timeline: Ireland 1800-1860s

Explanation of terms

Map

Routes and site references (quick guide)

Liverpool Irish Famine Trail sites

Site 1: The Liverpool Irish Famine memorial

Site 2: Pleasant Street School, Pleasant Street, L3 5TT

Site 3: The Brownlow Hill Workhouse, Hart Building, Mount Pleasant, L69 7ZX*

Site 4: The Paupers’ Graveyard, Mulberry Street, L69 7SH *

Site 5: Agnes Jones House, 1A Catharine Street, L8 7JZ

Site 6: Kitty Wilkinson’s grave, St James’s Garden sat Liverpool Anglican Cathedral, L1 7AZ

Site 7: St Patrick’s Chapel, Park Place, Park Road, L8 5RA

Site 8: James Larkin’s birthplace, The Globe, 44-46 Park Road, L8 6SH

Site 9: ThePilotage Building, Canning Pier, L3 1BY *

Site 10: The Relief Station, Fenwick Street, L2 0NZ *

Site 11: Father Nugent’s statue, St John’s Gardens (facing Old Haymarket and Tunnel entrance), L1 1JJ

Site 12: Lace Street, L3 2BP *

Site 13: ‘Dandy Pat’ memorial, St Anthony’s Church, Scotland Road, L5 5BD

Site 14: Clarence Dock, Regent Road, L20 8DJ

Site 15: Price Street, Birkenhead, CH41 6DQ *

Missing sites?

What next?

Acknowledgements

Reference list

ebook introductory note

The following publication is derived from a print version of this text. Consequently, all images have been removed for the benefit of scrolling and accessibility. However, as some images also came with additional information, we have retained their associated text, indicating the content of the original image. We hope this provides some insight in to the locations and places mentioned and encourage you to see out the full graphic version.

Publication notes

Liverpool Irish Famine Trail: Revive

First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Liverpool Irish Festival

First published in hardback and eBook

Copyright © Liverpool Irish Festival, 2022. Cover photography © AB, 2022

Liverpool Irish Festival asserts the moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988 to be identified as the author of this work (editor Emma Smith).

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library (Legal Deposit Office, Wetherby; Bodleian Library, Oxford and Cambridge University Library), National Library of Scotland and Trinity College Dublin.

ISBN-13 978-1-7396640-0-8 - Liverpool Irish Famine Trail: Revive (hardback)

ISBN-13 978-1-7396640-1-5 - Liverpool Irish Famine Trail: Revive (eBook)

Thema NH-1QF-3M

BISAC ARC024010 SOC007000 HIS015060

BIC HB-1DBK-1DBR-3J-4Y-5AX

Any proceeds from this book’s first-purchase-sales will support Liverpool Irish Festival to continue its arts and culture activities and progress work on the Liverpool Irish Famine Trail. The purchase price has been subsidised with support from The National Lottery Heritage Fund.

These pages are printed on recycled stock and covers are made using responsibly managed and sustainable sources. Liverpool Irish Festival is a carbon literate organisation.

liverpoolirishfestival.com liverpoolirishfaminetrail.com [e-mail]

Revitalising the Liverpool Irish Famine Trail

you have to understand,

that no one puts their children in a boat

unless the water is safer than the land

Excerpt; Home. Warsan Shire, 2009, Somalia.

What is this?

This book is a reflection on the work Liverpool Irish Festival -along with partners and friends- have done since 2019 to revitalise the Liverpool Irish Famine Trail.

It is not a complete history of An Gorta Mór (The Great Hunger), though it does track stories dating from this time, specific to sites of importance in Merseyside. It is important to make this distinction, so as not to misdirect or disappoint readers. Our intent is to mark the redevelopment of the Trail and document the progress of that work, as part of the ongoing history of The Irish Famine story, here in the North West.

In the coming chapters, we contextualise the environment preceding The Irish Famine, providing a history timeline to reflect events in Ireland and Liverpool around the time of The Great Hunger (1845-1852), and after. The timelines do not represent a full history, but a series of snapshots that link the events of The Irish Famine with their effects on Ireland and Merseyside. The primary focus is Liverpool, but we do acknowledge Wirral’s role. In later research, we will look further in to effects on the region, but -for now- we seek to take readers through the inception of the project, which reopens the original Liverpool Irish Famine Heritage Trail. In so doing, we hear from one of the Trail’s founding voices, Greg Quiery.

The Festival’s Artistic Director and CEO, Emma Smith, then describes repositioning the Trail 25-years on and why applying contemporary expectations and technological capabilities to the Trail are important. History Research Group Lead and ArtsGroupie CIC Director, John Maguire, details how the research took place and with whom.

We share the branding development and Trail map; provide the history of and offer stories for each of the original fifteen sites and consider sites that may be missing. Moving to where the project will take us next, the book closes with our official ‘honours list’, acknowledging those who have contributed from the 1990s to today. For any reader hoping to dig deeper in to our research methodology, a comprehensive reference list is presented.

The book is purposefully about the Liverpool Irish Famine Trail. It is not a history of The Irish Famine, which is justifiably receiving new attention and reinterpretation, linked to a renewed fervour for dissecting post-colonial histories. This approach is critical, as it alters the ‘victor’s narrative’ to one closer to ‘the truth’. The story must acknowledge the human cost, immoral policies and politics at play and contextualise the issues that gave rise to many real, predicted, accidental or unforeseen events. Where these stories intersect with the Trail, we share them, but our intent is not to offer a complete history; there are texts more voluminous, better placed and more skilfully articulated than this edition can provide.

Rather, this is a stepping stone to understanding the Trail, its context and the work to date. It is a preamble to further work and deeper investigation in to The Irish Famine and the legacy it has had on Liverpool and Ireland. It is a taster of work progressed and planned, to be followed by additional volumes, documenting the process for posterity. We hope it meets our ambition and provides its readers with a firm grounding for why this work is taking place now and the intentions it has for its community, the Irish diaspora, Liverpool and Ireland.

Further reading

For anyone wanting a fuller, richer, in-depth history on The Great Hunger and Liverpool, we recommend the texts by Christine Kinealy, Elizabeth Davey, Frank Neal, Greg Quiery and Patricia Runaghan, which can all be found in the reference list.

Photographic element: Liverpool Irish Famine memorial stones, carved by Éamonn O’Doherty. © E Smith

The Irish Famine memorial and the Trail

As readers will go on to learn, Liverpool’s Irish Famine memorial and trail were originally developed in the 1990s. The memorial is the keystone to the project. Though we will provide details on the memorial a little later, a transcription of the 1998 information, provided at the memorial site located at St Luke’s Church in Liverpool and presented by the Liverpool Great Hunger Commemoration Committee, reads as follows:

Between 1845 and 1852 over one million Irish people died from starvation and disease. A further one million emigrated. Ireland remains the only country in Europe where the population today is less than it was in 1845.

The causes of the famine were rooted in earlier centuries. Following colonisation, the English authorities divided the land between a small number of landlords. By the 1840s large numbers of the dispossessed lived in extreme poverty. When their staple crop, the potato, became diseased in 1845 it was catastrophic for them. Crop failures and famine continued for nearly a decade. The authorities offered little assistance. Hundreds of thousands emigrated every year.

Between 1849 and 1852 1,241,410 Irish emigrants arrived in Liverpool. With no help from government, relief was provided by the town through local rates. Many Liverpool citizens gave generously to help the sick and the starving.

In Liverpool parish in 1847 alone, over 7,000 paupers were buried in mass graves. Thousands more were buried in surrounding parishes. Amongst the victims were many who worked to help the sick, including Catholic and Protestant clergy, Christian Brothers, relieving officers, doctors and nurses. From Liverpool, thousands of Irish emigrants dispersed to destinations around the world.

The descendants of Irish migrants who remained in Liverpool have made a distinctive contribution to the multi-cultural heritage of the city. They