Preston's Little Ireland

Oh Hughie Costello said:
Yes, you're right I should have double checked the origin of the name before posting.

It's interesting you say that the first Mrs E was an Irish speaker - they say a lot of the Irish from the west coast spoke Irish as a first language but we have little evidence as to which individual families did.

There was an Irish family who lived on Canal Street since the 1840s who have descendants who are still living in Preston with the surname Prendergast. However, the name appears on census and BMD records as all forms of spellings such as Pindergist and Pendergest. They were from Castlebar but it suggests to me that they either had a very strong Mayo accent or spoke Irish as a first language.
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The spellings of surnames is a real nightmare. When we were looking in to her ancestry it was Ok with names like Doyle, but Durkan/Durkin and Roach/Roache/Roche were all interchangeable. We even found examples where siblings had slightly different spellings to their surnames in the parish records!

As to the Irish language, somewhere between the Tudors and the early 19th century, it became largely a language for the poor and for those in the west, which were mostly the same people I guess. Apparently in 1840 half the population spoke Irish (4m). After the famine and the mass emigration, the language collapsed. The Gaeltacht regions are mostly in the west (Bits of Mayo, Donegal, Galway, Kerry). Elsewhere there are clumps of Irish speakers in Waterford, Cork and Meath.
 
PNEESSEX said:
The spellings of surnames is a real nightmare. When we were looking in to her ancestry it was Ok with names like Doyle, but Durkan/Durkin and Roach/Roache/Roche were all interchangeable. We even found examples where siblings had slightly different spellings to their surnames in the parish records!

As to the Irish language, somewhere between the Tudors and the early 19th century, it became largely a language for the poor and for those in the west, which were mostly the same people I guess. Apparently in 1840 half the population spoke Irish (4m). After the famine and the mass emigration, the language collapsed. The Gaeltacht regions are mostly in the west (Bits of Mayo, Donegal, Galway, Kerry). Elsewhere there are clumps of Irish speakers in Waterford, Cork and Meath.
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Great play called Translations by Brian Friel which centres around this, among other things. Really recommend it.
 
PNEESSEX said:
It's a wonderful play seen it a couple of times. Last time was at the Olivier in 2019. Ciaran Hinds was really great in it.
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I thought it dragged a bit at times. I wasn’t in the mood for whatever reason.

It’s just been on here at the Lyric but I didn’t go. Have tickets for Stones in His Pockets in a few weeks though.
 
justinr73 said:
Lundy?

Do you leave the front gate open at home?

I’d keep that name quiet in a number of pubs at either end of our (very long) road, if I were you!
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Haha, I take it you have some Protestant links to Ulster?

I've been to Derry but luckily for me I didn't know about my Lundy ancestry back then.

Name comes from my third great-grandfather - Anthony Lundy from Kilglass in Sligo who appeared in the Preston newspapers on a few occasions - once described as an "eccentric Hibernian" so he might have been a bit of a character in the local neighborhood.
 
PNEESSEX said:
The spellings of surnames is a real nightmare. When we were looking in to her ancestry it was Ok with names like Doyle, but Durkan/Durkin and Roach/Roache/Roche were all interchangeable. We even found examples where siblings had slightly different spellings to their surnames in the parish records!

As to the Irish language, somewhere between the Tudors and the early 19th century, it became largely a language for the poor and for those in the west, which were mostly the same people I guess. Apparently in 1840 half the population spoke Irish (4m). After the famine and the mass emigration, the language collapsed. The Gaeltacht regions are mostly in the west (Bits of Mayo, Donegal, Galway, Kerry). Elsewhere there are clumps of Irish speakers in Waterford, Cork and Meath.
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There have been Roach's in Preston since before the Great Famine and it's perhaps one of the most popular Irish names in Preston come 1871 but it is almost always spelt Roach with Roche only appearing on the odd occasion but it's for a Roach family.

There was also a Durkin family from Mayo living on Canal Street by 1851 who have an interesting story behind them. By 1891 they owned a shop and left hundreds of pounds to relatives when they died - amounts worth tens of thousands these days - at a period when a lot of Irish didn't have a single pound to their name. Their 3rd generation actually ended up moving back to Ireland, with wealth in their pocket, and eventually settling in Dublin.
 
Pumba said:
Great play called Translations by Brian Friel which centres around this, among other things. Really recommend it.
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I'll try and take a look at this. Not normally something I'd take an interest in but long term I want to tell the story of Preston's little Ireland in media form. Personally I think it would make a great film, if gruesome and tragic at times. One of the potential issues though would be the language used by the characters and their accents. Anything too strong would be incomprehensible to a wider audience but having all the Irish having Lancashire accents and sayings would be just wrong.
 
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