How many people in the North of England have Irish roots. Exactly how many Irish people settled in the North and when? - J. Anderson, Houghton-le-Spring

Irish people have been settling in Britain for centuries. One of the biggest influxes of Irish was in the late Roman period when a northern Irish tribe called the Scotti invaded and settled western Caledonia. They ultimately gave their name to Scotland. Later, in Anglo-Saxon times there was considerable Irish influence in the North, particularly in Christian centres like Lindisfarne. The similarity of the Book of Kells and the Lindisfarne Gospels is one example of the strong cultural links between Ireland and Northumbria.

The links between northern England and Ireland continued into Viking times. Vikings of Danish and Norwegian origin settled in Dublin around 841 AD. They were primarily concerned with capturing Irishmen from the interior and then sold them as slaves to places in North Africa, the Mediterranean and Arabia. On the Irish coast Vikings intermarried with Irish for around seventy years and formed a mixed Irish-Norse community. Irish natives eventually evicted these mixed people. Evicted Irish-Norsemen settled extensively in northern England, including south Durham, North Yorkshire and Cumbria. Lancashire and north Cheshire was a major area for their settlement, especially the Merseyside area. It is interesting to note that some Irish-Norwegian evictees settled in Normandy and some of their descendants may have arrived in Britain at the time of the Norman Conquest.

It is likely that there was a small but continuous settlement of Irish people in northern England throughout Medieval times, but it was not until the 1790s that mass immigration commenced. This was most noticeable in the North West, where industrialisation and urbanisation attracted new immigrants in search of work. Manchester and Liverpool both had significant Irish populations well before the potato famine of 1845, even though this is the year usually cited as the beginning of mass Irish immigration into Britain.

Liverpool has had an Irish community since at least the fifteenth century but Manchester also has a large and long established Irish. Liverpool is often thought of as the English-Irish city, particularly as the Irish influence is quite noticeable in the Scouse dialect. This often causes historians to overlook Manchester's equally important Irish heritage. At the time of the 1851 census Liverpool and Manchester were one of four towns where Irish-born inhabitants numbered more than 50,000. The other two cities to exceed this were London and Glasgow.

Other towns with significant numbers of Irish in 1851 included Edinburgh, Dundee, Bradford, Leeds, Birmingham and Newcastle each with more than 7,000 Irish inhabitants. The next most significant Irish populations were in Paisley, Sunderland, Preston, Bolton, Stockport, Hull, Sheffield, Wolverhampton, Merthyr and Bristol. Each of these had more than 3,000 Irish-born. Of all the places in Britain, London had the highest number of Irish born inhabitants, but it can be seen that on the whole it was the Scottish and northern towns that saw the greatest influx of Irish.

About a fifth of Tyneside's population was Irish born in 1851 but this was much lower as a proportion and as a total than Liverpool or Manchester. Teesside would also come to have a major Irish population but Teesside's total population was still relatively modest in 1851 compared to other northern towns. However in the late nineteenth century Teesside's population saw a massive increase and the proportion of Irish in Middlesbrough's population was thought to be second only to Liverpool. The Irish influence in County Durham was also very strong. In 1891 around 36,500 people in County Durham's population of 869,400 were Irish born. However census figures only show the number of Irish-born in England and do not take account of children born in England to Irish parents. So the number of 'culturally Irish' people England may have been much higher than all these figures show.

Published: 17/06/2002

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