‘Born for the boat’

Real-life stories of the Irish diaspora.

In partnership with The London Irish Centre in Camden. This ongoing project aims to document, through street portraits and written interviews, the experiences of Irish men and women who came to the UK to start new lives.

Tony

Tony Maher started shaving when he was 9. There was a TB epidemic in Ireland in the 1940s, and many people in Tony's village of Monasterevin in County Kildare succumbed to the disease. Tony's mum had the job of preparing the dead for their coffins, and Tony would help his mum by shaving the faces of the deceased.

There was only one doctor in the area, and when babies were born, Tony's mum would often act as a midwife, and, again, Tony would help.

9-year-old Tony would be handed a brand new slippery baby, and it was his job to wash it. He'd then have to wrap it tightly in a long piece of cloth after putting a penny over its navel to stop its belly button from sticking out. Tony remembers how cumbersome the nappies were - great big squares of material that you'd have to fold into a triangle to make the nappy, which you'd attach with a giant safety pin.

Tony was good with his hands and, not knowing any different, wasn't bothered by experiencing so much life and death at such a young age. He was also the youngest of 9, so being in a big family, he grew up quickly. His parents had 67 grandchildren.

When he was 13, he got a job at the butcher shop. There were no refrigerators in the village back then, so the butcher would slaughter just one animal and sell it all in a day. 'From field to plate', Tony called it. They would kill the cattle and the pigs the old-fashioned way - with a hammer. This was often Tony's job. It never bothered him as being a country boy; he was used to killing rabbits and hares for the pot.

One of the reasons that a boy as young as Tony was given so much responsibility was that most young adults had left and moved to the UK. The exodus of young adults meant the town was mainly inhabited by young kids and older people. It was no big deal to see a 12 or 13-year-old working behind the bar of the village pub pouring Guinness. (The only drink on offer apart from spirits) Tony said the Guinness was different in those days, 'It was much stickier.' He said that if you let the froth run down the sides of the glass and onto the bar, the glass would get stuck once it dried out. He added that if you had a skinful, your lips would be stuck together in the morning, and you'd have the most terrible thirst.

He also said that the pubs would keep the pint glasses warm on a special shelf and doesn't really understand why they sell Guinness cold nowadays.

Tony was never that much of a drinker. When he was young, he didn't care about drink or cigarettes but loved to dance and would often walk 4 hours to Newbridge for a dance. If the dance ended late, he'd often meet his dad going out to work on the way back.

When Tony was around 15, he got a job at the general store. It sold groceries, hardware, animal feed - everything.

Once a week, someone from the store would go to the railway station with a horse and dray to collect tea chests full of provisions. Sacks of sugar, tea, and whole sides of bacon wrapped in hessian etc. This would be taken back to the shop, and then the staff would divide it, weigh it, and wrap it in brown paper and string.

Tony was one of the 6 boys working there. Everyone in the area was poor, but some old ladies who came into the shop were clearly destitute. They'd order a half ounce of tea which is a pitiful amount, and ask if there were any scraps from the bacon slicer.

Tony often slipped a bit more tea or a slice of bacon into their bags. Unfortunately, after a while, the ladies insisted on only being served by Tony, which led the boss to guess why and he sacked him. Tony never regretted getting sacked. He said that if he hadn't, he might still be working in that store now and would never have come to England.

Tony said that as you reached your late teens in the village, It was expected that you'd eventually leave. "I used to dream about life away from home - I had visions of these wonderful places where the sun was always shining. In a way, I was preparing to leave right from the start."

Just before his 18th birthday, Tony and a friend got the bus to North Wall in Dublin and then the boat to Holyhead.

Having previously worked as a butcher, Tony got work in an abattoir in Coventry. The slaughtering process was very different to back home. The animals were stunned before being killed; it was much more of a production line.

After work, Tony went drinking in an Irish pub,' The Hen and Chickens' in Keresley, on the outskirts of Coventry. He got chatting with some other Irish people in the pub, and when he told them what he was earning, they said, 'That's ridiculous, come out and work with us on the buildings where you'll get a proper wage.'

Tony said that these were wonderful times. It was 1955, and the whole place was a hive of activity, with everything being rebuilt after the war. They were rebuilding Coventry Cathedral at the time he was there.

There weren't many machines - everything was done with the pick and shovel - it was hard work, "But we were young and strong. We were natural builders because we came from the countryside and were good with our hands and were well capable of getting the work done."

Tony got paid in cash each week - sometimes in a brown envelope and sometimes just a handful of money. When it came to somewhere to eat, drink or stay, Tony said that the Irish people who'd been there a while would always point you in the right direction. There were Irish dances every weekend, which Tony loved. He met girls who were all Irish and mainly nurses.

Tony told me that being a nurse was a natural vocation for an Irish girl back then. This stemmed from their upbringing in the villages in Ireland, where people looked after each other, and everyone came from large families where everyone mucked in. Tony said he knew everyone within a 3-mile radius of his family home in Ireland. People always kept an eye out for each other - even the recluses. Tony said that if you noticed no smoke coming from their chimneys, you knew something was wrong with them and would go to help.

He said England was also different back then. It always felt safe in England. If you missed the last train, you could sleep the night on a bench in the station and not be bothered.

Tony had 2 brothers living in Harlow in Essex. His mum and dad had come from Ireland to England for a holiday and stayed with their sons. Tony's mum wanted a family get-together and sent the brothers on their motorbike with a sidecar on a mission to Coventry to go and get Tony.

Unbeknownst to them, Tony had a routine, he'd get paid on a Friday and then head off out of Coventry for the weekend on "a spree" with his mates. He didn't need much money to have a great time and often would have a bit left over for 'a cure' in the pub on a Monday morning.

The brothers arrived in Coventry, only for the landlady to tell them they'd just missed him. She was a friendly woman and let them stay in Tony's room until he got back, which they did as they wouldn't dare return to their mum without him. Sure enough, Tony appeared on Monday feeling rough. He was squeezed into the sidecar with his brother, and they headed back down south.

Once in Harlow, Tony decided to stay. It was a new town and growing fast, so there was plenty of work for builders like Tony. There was a big Irish community in Harlow back then. Enough for Tony to form a Gaelic football team. Tony loved sports but never had time for them as a kid, as he was always busy working.

At a church dance, Tony met Sheila.

Sheila is a Northerner. Her dad was a miner and died when she was three. Sheila's mum had moved to Harlow to get work and had settled there with her 4 daughters.

Tony and Sheila married in 1959. They have 6 kids, 12 grandkids and 5 great-grandkids.

They have travelled all over England together on holidays. Tony joked that he's seen more of England than Ireland. Every time he went home, he'd visit relatives and sit around their houses, so he never got to see much of the country.

Tony and Sheila Started off in a maisonette, then got a 3 bed, then a 5 bed, then a bungalow. Now Tony lives in a small house with a beautiful garden. Sheila doesn't live with Tony anymore.

About 10 years ago, when she was 77, Sheila was diagnosed with dementia. At first, Tony looked after her, but as her condition worsened, he couldn't cope as she was becoming a danger to herself. She now lives in a nearby care home.

Sheila never smoked, never drank and always had a terrific brain. Tony finds this hard to deal with, especially when he visits her and she doesn't always recognise him. He told me they call it 'The long goodbye' - "We had so many lovely years together, and it's very sad, but at least I know she's safe now. Apart from what Sheila and I have been through over the last couple of years, I've had a bit of a charmed life, to be honest."

Tony is 85 now, and his Gaelic football days are long over. The rest of his football team are 'All up the cemetery now' and thinks he might be 'The last Irishman standing' in Harlow.

"I was up the town the other day, and I said to a fella, 'There's no fun in getting old.' The fella replied, 'there is one good thing about it - it doesn't last long.'"

SEAMUS

When Seamus came to London from County Leitrim, he settled in Kilburn. At first, he had to share a room with another Irish bloke, but as soon as he got a job and some money together, he got his own place.

Initially, he worked at the Smith’s Instruments Factory in Cricklewood, making car speedometers. He then worked on the building sites before moving into the tarmacking trade. He preferred this as the money was good, and there was always constant work. He continued working in tarmacking until he retired at 70. He told me it's a hard job at first, but it gets much easier once you get the knack of it.

Back when he first came to London, the men from Leitrim tended to stick together and they’d go to all the dancehalls around Kilburn and Cricklewood. One evening, for a change, they decided to go down to South London to the Harp Dancehall in New Cross (now a nightclub called 'The Venue'). It was here that Seamus met Nora. She was from Donegal and was working at the local Woolworths.

Seamus and Nora clicked, and not long after, they were married. They bought a house together in Forest Gate and had a son and a daughter.

Life was good, but in her mid-40s, Nora became unwell, and when she was just 47, she passed away. The kids were at university at the time. So Seamus was on his own. Seamus admitted that around then, he started to drink. It was probably the loneliness. A couple of falls made him realise his drinking was becoming a problem, so he quit and hasn't touched a drop since.

Seamus has never got romantically involved with another woman since Nora passed away. He didn't want to upset his children. He told me that, even now, when they have their own families, it still wouldn't feel right to him if they ever thought that he’d replaced their mum.

Seamus has done well. He has raised 2 university-educated kids. One is an accountant, and the other is a teacher. He owns his own house and has a small pension. He now has 8 grandchildren and gets to see them often. He has no regrets about moving to England. "I always did well in London and always found a good place to stay. Any trouble I got into was my own fault."

Patricia

Patricia Mary Walsh has always been incredibly proud of her Irish heritage. So much so that she even gave her dog an Irish name. 

Pat adored animals and couldn't bear to see them harmed. She was a vegetarian back when it was generally frowned upon and way before it became fashionable. She was always popular at mealtimes because rather than make a fuss about being a vegetarian, she would simply transfer whatever meat she was given to the plate of the person sitting next to her.

Pat worked for many years as a civil servant, and it was while in the service she met her husband, Ken, who was originally from The Czech Republic. 

Ken converted to Catholicism to marry Pat. They tied the knot in Westminster Cathedral. Ordinary people are allowed to marry in the crypt.

Ken was 6'7. During WW2, he was a radar operator in the RAF. Being so tall, he often recollected how difficult it was for him to fit into the tiny radar cockpit on the planes. 

The couple had a happy marriage, but when Ken was in his early forties, he got cancer and passed away. The couple never had children.

Pat became an English teacher at Bishop Thomas Grant Catholic School in Streatham, SW London. She enjoyed the job and went on to become the deputy headmistress. 

Pat was a voracious reader and always loved teaching and learning. 

She often attended evening classes where she studied Russian and Gaelic. 

Even in her 80s, she had no problem operating computers. She also loved travelling and enjoyed a trip to Prague just before her 90th birthday. 

Pat was a good Catholic and always helped out in the community.

Right up until she was in her 90s, she often took local elderly people to hospital appointments. (Many of whom were younger than her)

A local priest had lost his sight, so Pat recorded 'The Daily Office' on tape for him to listen to. (The daily office consists of the various prayers a devout Catholic recites daily). 

Although she was still physically and mentally fit, the death of her beloved dog had a profound effect on Pat. She sold her house in Dulwich and moved to the assisted living section of a care home, where she continued to live independently.

In 2010 the Pope visited the home, and Pat got to meet him. She was wearing a blue suit that she made herself as she was also a keen dressmaker and often made her own clothes. She enjoyed meeting the Pope and recalled that 'he was a nice little man.'

A few years later, a fall took away Pat's confidence, and she moved into the nursing wing of the home. 

Pat is now 101 years old. 

Over the last couple of years, she has developed dementia. The onset was quite sudden and severe. 

Unfortunately, the once fiercely intelligent Pat is no longer able to communicate. 

I wrote this interview thanks to the help of Pat's closest friend Olga, a music teacher. The pair met almost 40 years ago, shortly after Pat retired when typically, Pat decided that this was a good time for her to learn how to play the flute. 

Peter

Peter was born in 1951 in County Meath.

He’s worked most of his life as a mechanic, so there was always plenty of work for him in Ireland.

He only came to England in the late 80s to be near his family, who had all moved there before him.

They’ve all since gone back to Ireland, but Peter now has an English girlfriend, so he’s staying put.

Bridget

Bridget was born in the countryside close to the village of Kilbarron in County Tipperary.

When she was 18, she met Michael at a dance. She 'liked everything about him', and it wasn't long before they decided to get married.

Her dad said she was too young. He said to Micheal, "You seem like a nice lad, so why don't you come back in a year and ask me again."

But Bridget was certain that Michael was the man for her, so the wedding went ahead. She remembers the day of the wedding. Everyone was waiting at the church; it was just her and her dad about to set off. Her dad said, "Bridget, it's not too late. We can come out of here and turn left to go to the church, or we can go right and drive to Dublin and have a holiday."

Bridget turn left and she and Michael were married.

Like most young people in the village, it wasn’t long before the couple came to England looking for work.

They settled in Forest Gate in the East End of London. They rented some rooms in a 'lovely' house. An Irish family lived on the floor above, and another lived on the floor below.

Michael got work labouring and started night school to train to become an engineer. He was determined to make the most of the opportunities available from living in London.

Bridget got work at the Matchbox Toy factory in nearby Hackney. At the time, Matchbox was the largest die-cast toy maker in the world. Bridget had to put the miniature toy cars in their boxes as they came along the production line. She struggled to keep up but didn't work there for long because she became pregnant. Michael insisted that she stop working and rest at home. "He wrapped me up in cotton wool to stop anything happened to his precious cargo."

Not long after, Michael noticed a lump in his neck. He went to the doctor and was diagnosed with advanced Hodgkin Lymphoma, an aggressive cancer of the lymphatic system. Nowadays, it's one of the easier cancers to treat. Chemotherapy treatment for this type of cancer was just being developed then, but Michael could not have been saved. The doctor and Bridget decided not to tell Michael that he was terminal. He seemed to know anyway and said he wanted to return to Ireland.

He passed away a few months after coming home. He was just 27, and Bridget was 22. Bridget will never forget standing in the graveyard with the veil blowing around her face in the wind. She felt so utterly alone. She was six months pregnant.

Bridget had an older brother, Gerry, who was also living in England. After the funeral, he said there was no way he would leave her stuck in a tiny village in the middle of Ireland. "If I leave you here, you'll sit in that chair for the rest of your life with rosary beads around your neck."

He'd already bought her a ticket, so she went back to England and lived with him and his wife.

Once she was back in London, she became unwell. She had severe Toxaemia (now known as Preeclampsia) and was taken to the hospital. When she was close to her due date, she haemorrhaged. The doctor said that she was too unwell to have an anaesthetic, and she was rushed into the operating theatre. Her baby, Jacqueline, was born perfect.

Bridget was a young single mum living with her brother and his wife; this wasn't a long-term solution, and she needed to get her own place.

Luckily, while she was at the hospital, she bumped into Doctor Choudhry. He had looked after Michael during his cancer treatment. When he saw that she had the baby, he said she could live in the flat above his practice and run the surgery downstairs.

At that moment, Bridget had a job and somewhere to live rent-free. Dr Choudhry lived in the big house opposite the surgery. He was a middle-aged man who had never married and didn't seem interested in women, but he treated Bridget like his daughter.

Bridget worked hard and saved every penny. At the weekends, she would leave the baby with her brother and his wife and work as an usher in a cinema in nearby Ilford to earn extra money.

For those first 5 years, she was too full of grief to have any social life. The only outing she'd ever go on was to a cinema in Brick Lane to watch a Bollywood film with the doctor. She didn't understand a word of it, but she loved the dancing and the music.

When she was 28, she had saved enough money to buy a house in Ilford. At first, it was just her and Jackie, but then she took in lodgers who lived upstairs to help pay the mortgage. They were 'two lovely Irish fellas' who kept themselves to themselves and never gave her any trouble.

Once her daughter was older, Bridget started to go out a bit more. She'd go to the dance halls with her brother and sister-in-law. She passed her driving test first time and started socialising.

She never had any proper romantic involvement with other men. She didn't want to overcomplicate her daughter's life. While her daughter was living at home, she wouldn't consider changing the status quo, "my daughter always came first; it was just how I was bought up.”

She then worked for Social Services and did ambulance training. A hospital for the elderly was closing down, and all the patients had to be transferred. This was done at night when the roads were quieter, and Bridget would drive the ambulance and move the elderly patients from the old hospital to the new. This was exhausting but rewarding work.

Bridget’s daughter did well at school and decided she wanted to become a dentist. So Bridget sold her house and used some of the proceeds from the sale to help pay for her training. Bridget bought a flat in Hackney. It was an ex-council flat, and she paid just £28,000 for it.

Her investment in her daughter paid off because Jackie now works as a dentist in Rhode Island, America. She often comes over to visit Bridget. Bridget is retired now, but she likes to keep busy. She volunteers at Irish Elders Centre in East London. She sold her flat in Hackney and now lives in a modern apartment overlooking the river.

She is proud of how well she has coped mentally over the last fifty years. Moving to a new country and losing her husband when pregnant, and then bringing up her daughter alone. "Behind every smile is a sadness. Michael and I were good souls, but it just wasn't to be."

JOAN

Joan is 88. She came to London from County Laois in 1951 when she was just 16.

She started out working as a housekeeper for a Jewish family in Golders Green. The family were lovely and she quickly got used to living in London.

She’s always lived in Fitzrovia, an area just north of Soho in the heart of the capital

Joan still loves the area, but all her Irish friends have either ‘moved away or passed away.’

Mary Boyle

Mary rose Boyle was born in County Monaghan in 1925 

She's named after her 2 grandmothers, Mary and Rose, although nearly everyone calls her Mary. Her parents were farmers. They had horses, pigs and cows. There was potatoes to sew and corn to cut but according to Mary, "There was nothing hard about it, we had a lovely life." She remembers springtime, running home barefoot from school through the meadows. She remembers the snow being so deep in the winter that her dad would come and meet her at school. She can still picture him now, shivering under a tree as he waited.

Mary was the eldest of 5, and her village was right on the newly formed border between Southern and Northern Ireland. A little stream ran through the meadow, and the border ran through the middle of it. Mary told me that you could stand in a different country with each foot.

Mary remembers there being a lot of smuggling. Things were either cheaper or more expensive on one side of the border than the other. She’d be awoken in the middle of the night by the sound of pigs or cattle being driven across. One morning, her dad found a young heifer standing shivering next to one of the houses. It must've separated from the herd, and the smugglers hadn't noticed. Later that day, someone appeared and sheepishly asked if anyone had found a cow.

Her village was in a remote place, but a soldier would come and stand guard. Her house was about 15 yards from the border. They'd use the stream water for washing, but if they wanted drinking water, they had to use the spring which was in Northern Ireland. Mary remembers taking the bucket to the guard and asking him to fill it up as they weren't allowed to cross. She said her mum would often make him a cup of tea as she felt sorry for him standing alone in the middle of nowhere. 

When Mary became an adult, there was nothing to do in the village. So she got a job as a 'mothers helper' in Belfast. Mary loved her time there and remembers sitting on the banks of Loch Belfast at Green Island on long Summer evenings. She remembers the foghorns on the boats going by on misty mornings. Mary also loved dancing and loved to go to the dance halls at Whiteabbey. 

She also worked as a housekeeper and carer, helping elderly people in their homes. It was a responsible job, but being the eldest of 5 and growing up in the country, it was just one of those things that all country girls did.

Two friends of hers, Sade and Susan McKenna, decided to go to England to work, and Mary was supposed to go with them. The timings didn't work out, so the sisters went first, and Mary followed sometime later. She remembers it being a rough sea crossing, and she couldn't sleep at all. People were so seasick they were lying on the deck. This was followed by a long train journey from Holyhead to Euston. Mary remembers being squashed up against the window the whole trip by a huge man on the packed train. She arrived in Euston at 7am, exhausted and desperate for a cup of tea and a night of sleep. She'd arranged to meet a friend who she had been exchanging letters with and wandered around for ages before she eventually found her.

Mary's first job was at one of the most exclusive addresses in London. She worked as a mother's helper in 'The Boltons' in a mansion owned by Russian aristocrats. It was quite a shock for Mary to be in such opulent surroundings and the indoor toilets and baths were a novelty. She was told to wear trousers for the job and was sent to the local shop, Harrods, to get them. Again, Harrods was like nothing she's seen before back in Ireland. Mary’s friends thought her trousers were very posh and she often lent them to anyone who was going out somewhere special. Mary’s group of friends working in London all came from her part of Ireland. They tended to stick together and often met up and went together to Irish dances. It was at a christening that she first met Patrick.

He was raised in an area close to Mary's village but north of the border. She already vaguely knew his family. When she took him back to Ireland to meet her mum, it turned out that her mum had been to school with his.

The couple married in 1951 and rented a small flat in Camberwell in South London.

Patrick worked at the Henry Ford factory in Dagenham. Every day, he would get up early and take the first bus out of Camberwell into Central London where he'd get the tube east to Dagenham. He did shift work making car parts.  He said that it felt like 'The whole of Ireland' was working at Fords. 

Mary had four kids. The flat had no bathroom, so they'd wash in a zinc tub. Luckily, they also lived directly opposite Camberwell baths and her kids made good use of the swimming pool. Despite the flat being small, Mary always made sure that there was room for people coming over from Ireland who needed somewhere to stay. She hosted her brothers when they came to start a life in England, as well as other people from the village doing the same. Mary said that it was just how it was back then. She remembered the feeling of first turning up in England from Ireland, so was always wanting to help out. 

Her dad also came to stay with Mary and Patrick when her mum passed away. He stayed for many years until he went into a nursing home.

The family stayed in the flat until 1972, when it was demolished to make way for the new London Magistrates Court. Mary and the family were rehoused in a council house near Denmark Hill with a lovely garden, bathroom, and two WCs.

About this time, Mary's sister-in-law got a job working for a high-class caterer and would often ask Mary to help by doing a bit of waitressing. Mary told me she met, “All the Hob-Nobs” through this. Once, she was standing at a function holding a silver tray of quail eggs when she was tapped on the shoulder. When she turned around, it was the Queen wanting one of the canapés. Mary enjoyed this job, and an extra bonus was that they'd often be given lots of luxury food items that weren't used at the events.

Patrick retired from Ford in his early sixties. He’d dedicated his entire life to working at the factory, and when work finished, he was bored and would often say, "I will be dead within a year." He really did believe this. If the house needed something new, he'd say, "what's the point? I won't be around much longer anyway." He then started to do a bit of gardening. At first in his back garden, but then for some of the big houses in nearby Dulwich. His reputation grew, and more wealthy people wanted him to do their gardens. It was like a second life. He then took up cooking, got into football and even home brewing. He continued gardening right up until he was in his eighties. He passed away at 94, over 30 years after retiring.

Meanwhile, Mary got into knitting and then sewing. She was the first on her street to have a knitting machine and always made clothes for her relatives. The wife of Mary's eldest son, Michael, died very young of breast cancer. Mary would look after her 6-year-old granddaughter Claire every night after school until Michael got home from work. Mary said it was lovely spending so much time with her young granddaughter.

Mary is 97 and now lives in the same care home that her dad went to. She said living in a care home isn't ideal, but she knows it's the right place for her as she is no longer able to do her own shopping and was starting to worry about having a fall when she was at home. She makes sure she does a couple of circuits around the care homes garden every day, as it's important to her to keep active. The home is run by nuns, and Mary says they are lovely. She goes to mass every morning. Faith has always been a part of her life, and she cannot imagine not having a religion. 

Mary feels that she has had a good life. She doesn't feel like she has had any real problems over the years, and as she put it, "I can safely say everything went 'hunky-dory.'"

Margot

A few years ago, Margot was on a bus that was involved in a crash. Ever since then, she has had back problems.

She was born in Dublin 93 years ago and was waiting for a bus to take her to the chemist when I took this shot.

She told me that when she was younger, she travelled all over the world. She's been to Russia, Canada, Australia, and many other countries. She said that she's 'travelled up mountains and into deserts.’

She came to England when she married an English pilot. He passed away years ago when he was just 59.

Margot now lives on the South Coast but doesn't like it much, and if she were a bit younger, she'd go back to Dublin.

I asked Margot if being married to a pilot explained why she travelled so much.

She shook her head and said it was because her father bred racehorses. Her family would travel everywhere because of his work. She said her dad was on first-name terms with the Queen, who was a huge horse racing fan.

I asked Margot if she ever rode horses. She said she was riding when she was five years old and would still be doing so now if it were not for her bad back.

Justin

Justin was born in Wexford in Ireland. There was no work when he was young so like thousands of others, he emigrated. Justin ended up in Balham in South London where he’s lived for 35 years.

He worked at a nurse at St James’s Hospital (since demolished) and then in King George’s in Tooting.

A while ago, he visited Australia where he discovered he had lots of relatives that he previously didn’t know existed. They’d all emigrated from Ireland too, but years before and also looking for work. Justin visited some of their graves in Sydney and he said it was quite a moving experience seeing his relatives buried on the other side of the world from Ireland.

Justin is retired now. He’s 83 in May. He’s got 2 sons and a daughter but is no longer married. He divorced his wife when he discovered that ‘she looked the other way’

Phyllida

Phyllida is originally from Dublin. She came to London at just 15 to study ballet. After three years, her teacher, Anna Ivanova, was invited to put on Swan Lake and Giselle for the Cuban National Ballet and 19-year-old Phyllida was asked to join the company. Phyllida agreed and travelled to Cuba. She performed all over South America, which she told me was' such fun' for a young girl. 

The company got into financial difficulties in Bueno Aires. Juan Perón, the then president of Argentina and a ballet fan, paid off their debts and lent them his yacht, 'The Evita,' to get them all back to Cuba.

Phyllida returned to London, and at an audition at the Royal Festival Hall, she met Donald, who was already an established dancer there. She told me that there's quite a hierarchy in ballet, and the other dancers didn't talk much to the new girl. Perhaps because he was a New Zealander, Donald was much more friendly, and they have been a couple ever since. They married after three months and had a working honeymoon in Monaco after dancing for Princess Grace.

Upon returning to London, they rented a tiny flat in Pimlico above a shop. The mould was so bad that mushrooms would grow in the shared bathroom, but the rent was just £2 per week.

They then moved to a flat above Clapham South Tube, which they loved as it had its own bathroom and central heating. Donald told me that he never tired of looking out at night and seeing "The strings of lights from the car headlamps glimmering across Clapham Common." 

They bought their current house in Balham in 1971. The couple love Balham, "It has everything, 13 Churches, a Mosque, an Indian Temple, and so many wonderful charity shops". They have 2 daughters. One was a dancer and now teaches dance. The other worked as an actress in the theatre and is now a director. 

After having her babies, Phyllida gave up dancing on stage. However, she did perform one more time. She went to Oxford with her newborn baby to watch Donald dance. One of the ballerinas didn't show up, so Phyllida's daughter was put into a drawer that doubled as a makeshift cot. While the landlady kept an eye on the baby, Phyllida had one last dance on stage with Donald. RIP Donald 2022.

Arthur

Arthur was born in 1937 in County Laois. His dad was a farm labourer, and the family of 5 lived in a tiny thatched cottage.

When Arthur was 12, his dad went into hospital for an operation and nearly died. They gave him an hour to live but somehow, he recovered. Going back to work was out of the question, so Arthur left school and worked the fields to earn money for the family. He'd plough all day with 2 horses, and the farmer would pay him £2 per week with dinner and supper.

When Arthur reached 18, he borrowed a £5 note. The banknote was a "Huge snow white piece of paper." He used it to buy the train fare to Dublin, the boat fare across the Irish Sea, and three weeks' rent for digs in England. He still had some change.

It was 1956 when Arthur got boarded the SS Princess Maud in Dublin. After it had set sail, he went upstairs and looked out the window; he couldn't believe that he was surrounded by the sea. (He'd never seen the ocean before) He'd thought that the trip would be like crossing a river and said that if he had known that the ship went out to sea, he would never have left Ireland.

In England, he worked on the construction of the High Marnham Power Station in Nottingham.

After a few months, Arthur decided to go to London. He stayed with a cousin near the Oval Cricket ground in South London.

He got work as a landscape gardener and did this for 52 years. "It was the first job I got in London and the last job I got in London."

Arthur's first wife, Margaret, was from Tipperary. They met in The Galtymore dancehall in Cricklewood. They had a daughter, Caroline. Sadly, Margaret passed away at just 33. They had been married for 10 years.

A few years later, Arthur was back in Galtymore dancehall when he met his second wife, Mary. They were married for 46 years until she passed away aged 83.

Arthur never regretted coming to England. "If I hadn't come, I'd still be back in Ireland eating grass."

He loved his job, but eventually, they said, "Arthur, you've gone past your sell-by date., it’s time to put down your shovel” He retired at 72.

He has bad knees from all those years digging, "I worked hard, but I don't regret it. I've had a great life - I just wish I still had my two girls with me.”

Michael

Michael’s living room has an old photo of his dad in army uniform. Michael never got to meet him in person because a month before Michael was born, he died of pleurisy.

This was 1939 in Ballymote, County Sligo.

Michael did well at school. He got his leavers certificate a year early and was allowed to leave at 14.

The priest came around and said, “Michael, you are going to college.”

Michael said, ‘No way,’ The priest looked at his mum and was surprised when she said, “It’s up to Michael what he does with his life.”

So Michael left school to pursue his dream of becoming a jockey.

He’d been pony racing since he was 6. After mass on a Sunday, everyone would turn up with their ponies and race.

Many famous jockeys, including the racing legend Sir Tony McCoy, started their career in pony racing.

During the week, Michael was paid to look after the horses and the stables. The money was terrible, but Michael lived for the races. He was doing well, and after winning one, he was approached by a man from Northern Ireland asking if he fancied racing in Enniskillen. Michael asked about the pay, and the man replied, “It depends if you do as you are told - we will want you to win some races and lose others.”

Times were hard back then, and Michael had to support his widowed mum, so he agreed and started his career as a ‘Flapper racer.’

Flapping is horse racing that isn’t run under Jockey Club rules. Once a horse or jockey participates in a flapping meeting, they are no longer eligible to participate in ‘proper’ racing.

Unfortunately, not long after, a man from the Irish turf club took Michael’s photo, and he was, in Michael’s words, “Done for like a kipper.”

His hopes of one day becoming a professional jockey were over, so he came to England and got work as a decorator in Wimbledon.

Not long after, he met Noreen at the Hammersmith Palais. She was a seamstress, and they got married and had four kids.

Noreen’s uncle then got Michael a security job at the ’Town Terminal’ in Kensington. When Heathrow first opened, they thought that only the wealthy would get flights and would be dropped off by chauffeurs or taxis. They didn’t allow for the huge number of passengers wanting to fly and the growth in car ownership.

To lessen congestion, a facility was built in Kensington where passengers checked in and dropped off their luggage before being transported on buses to the airport itself. Michael worked there until the mid-70s, when the Piccadilly Line was extended to Heathrow, making the Town Terminal obsolete.

Michael then went for a job interview at Victoria and Albert Museum. Having worked in airport security, Michael had an excellent CV, and they gave him the job on the spot.

He loved working in the museum. He loved walking around the empty galleries after everyone had gone home.
Because the museum had many functions, he also met many dignitaries and famous people.
He met Princess Diana, whose lady-in-waiting handed him some flowers to look after while she was at a function. As she left, the Princess turned and thanked Michael in person.

On another occasion, Prince Michael of Kent was visiting the museum. Michael was told to direct the royal car to the dedicated parking space. When the Prince arrived, Michael told the chauffeur to follow him as he walked to the space. The Prince called from the car and told Michael to hop in as they drove to the parking area. As Michael passed his boss in the Royal car, he waved regally.

Later his boss joked, “Trust you, Reynolds, to get your Sligo arse into a royal car.”

Michael could have retired at 60, but the bosses called him in and said we like having you around, so he stayed until he was 65.

Looking back on his life and all the experiences and opportunities that he has had, Michael is ‘over the moon’ that he came to England.

Moira Dempsey

Moira has always loved music - especially Irish music. One of her first memories is listening to the radio in their rural house in County Monaghan. Her family lived in a remote place along a narrow lane. On one occasion, they had to call out the doctor, and he scratched his car en route and said he'd never come back to such an out-of-the-way place again.

Her dad was a talented builder. He was a gifted stonemason and a master carpenter. He was a quiet man, but when he got drunk, he would fly into a rage and abuse Moira's mum. Moira remembers being scared of an evening waiting for him to come home from the pub. Just talking about it still upsets her today - over 60 years later.

Moira's mum was called Bridget, but everyone knew her as "Cissie." She had a brilliant sense of humour, was a good singer and could have done anything with her life, but she was stuck in a marriage marred by her husband's alcoholism and abuse.

Her dad kept drinking all his wages, so Cissie got a job in the factory to feed the kids. 

She went to see the priest for help, but he said marriage was sacred and, 'You've made your bed, and you have to lay in it."

Cissie put up with the abuse for 20 years, but in the end, they made their escape. One day, when Moira's dad was at work, they packed their bags and came to England. Cissie only had £15 to her name, but she had to get away. Cissie, Moira and one of her brothers made the trip - her other brother was away on a course and would come over later. 

They went to stay with a friend in Surbiton for the first night and then in a B&B. 

Cissie got a job in a launderette. 13-year-old Moira lied about her age and worked there for six weeks with her mum. This was 1962 when it was easy to get a job in England. It was hard work, and Moira remembers struggling to feed the heavy washing into the big rollers.  

They'd come to England in July, and Moira went to the local convent school when the school holidays ended. It was full of second-generation Irish and Italian kids. They were all fascinated by Moira's strong Irish accent - they kept asking her to talk so they could hear it. This actually had the effect of making her a quiet girl.

Moira said the other girls at the school were lovely. Nobody in England knew about her dad's drinking problem. It felt like all the shame Moira had suffered back in Ireland from having an alcoholic father had been left there. Thanks to the bravery of her mum, it was a new start.

Cissie did loads of jobs to put food on the table for her kids. She ended up working as a cook in the BHS canteen. They moved around quite a bit but eventually ended up living in New Malden.

Moira remembers missing Ireland so much in those early days. She had to leave so much behind, including all her friends. She'd often dream of them and then wake up and realise that she couldn't just pop down the lane to see them, as she was in another country.

She loves an old Irish folk song, 'Spancil Hill,' (Sung by Christy Moore in the 70s) because it encapsulates how she felt back then. 

Last night as I lay dreaming of pleasant days gone by

My mind being bent on rambling, to Ireland I did fly

I stepped on board a vision, and followed with a will

and shortly came to anchor at the cross of Spancil Hill.

Cissie always remained concerned about her husband. She kept in contact with him and said he could come to England if he wanted. Whenever he had enough money to come, he would spend it all, 'going out on a spree.' He never made it to England.

When he died at 72, Cissie wasn't entitled to a widow's pension. Ironically, he was paid a 'desertion payment' when he retired.

After school, Moira did a couple of jobs before working for the building society Abbey National (Now Santander). She worked her way up to a management position and stayed with the company for nearly 40 years.

She met Joe when she was 30. She'd had a few boyfriends before, but nothing serious.

They met at The Hibernian Dancehall in Fulham in 1981. Moira had spotted Joe on a few previous occasions and thought he looked handsome with his dark hair and beard. For obvious reasons, Moira always had it in her mind to see what a man was like when he'd been drinking before she decided to take it any further. So it was handy that when Joe plucked up the courage to ask Moira, "Can you handle a dance?" he'd clearly had a few too many. Moira could immediately see that he was a gentleman and still polite when he had a drink.

Joe is from County Laois and came to England in the 70s to work as a welder. Cissie loved Joe and was delighted that her daughter had found such a kind man to spend her life with. Cissie passed away when she was 85 - she never went back to live in Ireland. Moira's brothers, who all live close to Moira, had kids, and Cissie didn't want to move away from her grandkids.

Moira and Joe have been happily married for almost 40 years. Over the years, Joe has lost his hair and most of his beard, but Moira hasn't lost her love of him or Irish music. She's been doing Irish Set dancing since the 1990s. At first, she went to lessons, and when the teacher returned to Ireland, Moira became the group teacher. She taught Set and Ceili dancing for thirty years and ran many Ceilies, which raised money for charities. She finds it very rewarding and has met some lovely people. 

Moira confided that dancing has been the 'Saviour of my life.' If she is ever worried or upset, she forgets everything when dancing. Moira and Joe visit Ireland every year to visit relations and go to music and dance festivals. They meet up with lots of people whom they know from the dance scene. Moira loves this because she feels like she belongs when she's doing her Set dancing in Ireland. 

However, that feeling of belonging isn't something that she always feels when she's in Ireland.

She loves her time there and seeing her relatives, but it just isn't home anymore.

Joe and Moira have thought about going back to Ireland to live but feel that this is unlikely now. They have made a life for themselves in England. Moira added that she will always be Irish and will always love Ireland, "I can accept being a foreigner in England, but I couldn't be one in Ireland."

Theresa

Theresa was born in Athlone on the River Shannon in Central Ireland.

Her family owned a shop/pub called Galligan's. Back then, in Ireland, it was common for the local grocers to have a bar and a few tables and chairs for drinkers.

 Times were hard, so her mum and siblings moved upstairs and rented out the shop below. Her dad had already moved to Rugby in England to work on the busses. Theresa still remembers the registered letter arriving every Friday with the money that her dad sent back.

Her mum was a dressmaker and did alterations, and they also took in lodgers, so they got an extra few Punts.

Theresa told me that she had a lovely childhood, “The money wasn't there, but I think we were a lot happier than people are nowadays.” 

When she was 17, she got pregnant. Theresa was way too scared to tell her mum, so she came to England. She told everyone that she was just going on holiday, but had got a job in a pub that she saw advertised in an Irish newspaper. She just had to get away. The shame of being unmarried and pregnant in Ireland in the 1960s was too much.

The bar where Theresa worked was in Tottenham, and she lived in a room above. The hours were long in the busy London pub. Theresa worked until 1.30 am and then had to be up for mass at the local church at 7 am.

The father of the child that Theresa was carrying was called Tommy, and he was a soldier. She'd met him through his brother, who used to drink in the family shop/pub in Athlone.  

When she wrote to Tommy to say she was pregnant, he deserted the army and came to England to be with her.

They managed to get their own place in Cricklewood in North London, and both got jobs in the McVities biscuit factory in Harlesden. The factory is still there - the largest biscuit factory in Europe.

One night, they went for a drink with Theresa's brother and one of his friends who worked in the local Job Centre. She said to Theresa, "What's a girl like you doing working in a biscuit factory? Come and see me at work tomorrow, and I will sort you out." Theresa went the next day, and the friend got her a job doing accounts. This was much easier work for Theresa as she'd always had an aptitude for figures. Even now, she can still add up the cost of her shopping in her head as she goes around the supermarket. 
She had a baby boy. Although he wasn't planned, Theresa thinks that he was one of the best things to happen to her. He's 55, lives in West London, and deals in antiques. He and Theresa often meet up in London for lunch.

When the baby was eight months old, Theresa finally plucked up the courage to write to her mum and tell her the truth. She sent photos of the baby along with the letter. 

At first, Theresa didn't hear back, but her mum's neighbour saw that her mum had put the baby photo on the kitchen cabinet and told her, "You have to write to her; it's your grandson," A few days later, Theresa got a letter saying, 'come home.' 
Theresa married Tommy. She faked her dad's signature because, in Ireland in the 60s, a girl under 21 had to have her father's consent to marry. At the time, her dad was still working in Rugby, but she didn't get in contact - there was no way she was going to tell him that she had an unplanned pregnancy.

When they got back to Ireland, Tommy, who had deserted, had to hand himself into the military police. He was court-martialled and got a 6-month term in 'The Glasshouse' detention camp in The Curragh.

The minister of defence lived in the same town as Theresa. So she went to his office and told them she had a baby and couldn't survive without Tommy's wage. Her pleading worked because his sentence was reduced to 6 weeks. Upon leaving the detention camp, Tommy got work as an engineer. The couple got a cottage and had two more sons.

Tommy was always a very jealous man. At first, this wasn't too bad, but gradually, this got worse, and he started to get violent. He would never let Theresa out of his sight and was suspicious of her every move. Tommy would get abusive even if Theresa visited a female neighbour. The constant, 'Who are you talking to?' made life unbearable, and after 12 years of this, she just walked out the door and went back to England. Tommy was fine with the kids, so she left them with him until she settled.

 She got a room in Balham in South West London and got a job in the nearby Prince of Wales Pub. Once she had found a place to live, she bought her kids over.

A few years later, she was working in a cafe in nearby Battersea. She got chatting with a customer who often came in for breakfast. His name was Hersey, and he was a landscape gardener. They eventually became a couple, got married, and had two kids together. Theresa isn't sure why she married Hersey. Looking back, she was 38 at the time and thinks she probably did it just to get a bit of security.

Unfortunately, he also became violent. He had a real Jekyll and Hyde personality. He could be very loving and kind but could quickly fly into a rage. He once threw Theresa over the bannisters. Again, Theresa left. She told me that she thinks that if she had stayed, there was a chance he would have killed her. 

Years later, Hersey was on his deathbed, and he got in touch with Theresa. She went to see him, and he said, "It wasn't all bad, was it?" Theresa replied, "We had some good times, and we had some lovely kids. You were always a fighter, so fight this." It was the last thing she said to him because he died shortly after.

Theresa was given a new flat in Stockwell by a housing charity for women who have suffered domestic violence. She said she was lucky to get a flat because usually, people just get rooms. Perhaps because she was finally in a safe place with time to reflect, she became depressed. Theresa had been through a lot over the years, and sitting alone with her thoughts, she started to drink. At first, it was just a glass or two of wine in front of the telly. But this built up until she was getting through 3 bottles a day, along with several vodkas. She said the funny thing was that she could drink all that and go out, and people wouldn't have a clue.

One day, she realised that she had to stop. So she went to an AA meeting in nearby Brixton. When Theresa plucked up the courage to walk through the door, she was shocked to discover that the person running the group was someone she knew from back in Ireland, who she hadn't seen for 40 years. Once she got over the embarrassment, she did a few AA meetings and something inside her clicked, and Theresa stopped drinking. At first, the sickness caused by her body reacting to no alcohol was unbearable, but eventually, she got better and has never touched a drop since. 

Theresa loves her flat and told me that she has great neighbours, which is the most important thing to her. Her postman is one in a million - he always asks how she is and helps carry her shopping. Her neighbours will take her rubbish down to the bins, and she lives close to a Brazilian cafe where she has made many friends. Her group includes women from Norway, Germany, Holland, Jamaica and a Londoner. 

Theresa also has a new partner. 72-year-old Sullivan from Cork. They don't live together and are more good friends than anything. He lives in Wandsworth, brings her the Irish papers every Sunday, and does any repairs needed around her flat. Theresa likes it that way, "I'm too set in my ways to live romantically with another man."

However, Theresa does live with another man, a builder who is her lodger. He's lived in the spare room for 11 years, but Theresa told me you'd hardly know he was there. He gets up early to go to work and always leaves his room and the bathroom spotless. It's reassuring for her to have someone there. Theresa has balance issues and has had a few nasty falls, so has been advised not to live alone. She and the lodger share the shopping bills. She does a big shop at Asda every week but will also go to Iceland when it's 10% off on pensioners day. 

She is still in touch with her first husband, Tommy. He's in a care home now. They get on well, and she doesn't hold any grudges. She told me, "I'm 75 now and can honestly say I'm happier now than I have ever been."

Theresa also loves Irish dancing and Irish music. She often goes on dancing holidays and cruises and has been all over Europe on dance-related trips. 

Theresa's biggest passion is reading. She gets through 2-3 books a week. As she showed me the stack of books by her bed, waiting to be read, she said with a grin, "I used to be an alcoholic, but now I'm a 'bookaholic.'"

Mary Coughlan

Mary Coughlan is 78. She was born in Cork but has lived in Waterloo in central London for the last 60 years. She said it was tough at first back in the '50s, but in the '60s, everyone started to earn more money, and life in London' 'got good.'

Mary was sitting on a bench outside a pub when I took this shot. She wasn't drinking. She's just finished a Mcdonalds' apple pie which she says is a treat she sometimes has before getting the bus home.

Mary never married. She loved travelling too much. She does have a long-term friend, though. Wilfred. He's German and 'is a very kind man.' They met on a bus in Regent Street and have been together for years. He keeps the flat tidy, and she told me that he will be back there now cooking her some fish for tea as it's Friday.

I asked her what her family back in Ireland thought about her not getting married. She said her 'mammy' was fine about it after a while because she could see that Mary was happy.

When she first came to England, Mary told me that her mum would phone her from Cork twice a week to check that she was okay and eating properly. This carried on until just four years ago when her mum passed away aged 104 and Mary was 74. 'She is dearly missed,' said Mary.

Tom Ryan

Tom Ryan was born on a farm in Tipperary in 1937.

He might still be there now if it weren't for a phone call he got from a friend in 1961. His friend had already come to England and told Tom he should do the same. Tom can't remember why he came. He thinks it was just because he was young and adventurous. "When you are young, nothing is too hot or heavy, but when you are old, everything is too hot and heavy." A week later, Tom started working behind the bar in a vast South London pub, The Falcon in Clapham Junction. Arriving in London was a big culture shock for Tom. Before then, the only pub he'd ever seen was a small area set aside for drinkers in the general store in his village back home.

Despite working in a pub, Tom is a teetotaller. The 'Pioneer’ movement was introduced to Ireland in 1889. It encouraged Irish kids to vow never to drink and when Tom was a teenager he took ‘The Pledge.’ Tom said, "It's a promise but not an oath; if you break it, you are not committing a sin." Nevertheless, Tom has never touched alcohol. He struggled at first to understand the customers, "I didn't understand their Cockney accents. But to be honest, they had less chance of understanding me." The other bar staff were friendly and showed him the ropes. The first place he visited was the Granada Cinema in Clapham Junction, where he went to see the movie, 'The Guns of Navarone.' Tom never got homesick because he'd go back to Tipperary at least 3 times a year.

A guy Tom knew in the pub got him a job in the tarmacking trade. Tom never liked working in the pub. He didn't like all the noise and the late hours. He much preferred being outside, and tarmacking gave him much more freedom. His first job was tarmacking the paths in the nearby Battersea park. He told me you started and finished early, and the more work done by 'dinner time' (midday), the better. He added that you have to work hard and you have to work fast because the tarmac sets.

Most of his co-workers were English. Tom enjoyed working with them and said they were nice blokes. There was always the odd joke, especially when England played Ireland at rugby - but there's always banter around building work.

Tom believes that when you are new to a country, you are "Fashioned by the people you meet; the people you get to know influence you and set your path." One of those people was a friend he knew from Cork who was a keen runner. He said that Tom should come to his athletics club to watch him run in a race. Tom, who was around 30 then, always enjoyed watching athletics on the telly, so decided to go.

It was a two-mile race, and just before it started, Tom, who was a heavy smoker at the time, put his cigarette out and decided to have a go himself. Even though it was the first time he'd ever run competitively, Tom nearly won and finished considerably quicker than his mate.

This got Tom into running and when he wasn’t out laying tarmac, he was out training. Someone told him to give up cigarettes because maybe, he could be good. So one New-Years Eve at 5 minutes to midnight, Tom gave up smoking and has never touched a cigarette since. He joined a running club, North London Athletic in Hampstead. He mainly ran cross-country and trained on Clapham Common, close to his home in Battersea.

Tom started to compete and would often win. He also ran back in Ireland, and would win there too.

He won the all-Ireland 5-mile trek championship and the 15-mile road race.

He raced in France with Hercules Running Club in Wimbledon.

Tom started running late in life, and it’s hard not to wonder what would have happened if he’s started in his early twenties rather than his thirties.  He’d race against athletes that he used to watch on the telly when he was younger and would often beat them.  Even when he was 40 years old, he could run 5K in just 17 minutes.

In his 50s, he ran a half marathon in 1h 13m and came 2nd in the national championships for the over 50s.

Having tarmacked countless car parks, roads, school playgrounds and even Brands Hatch racing circuit, Tom retired at 70. After retiring, Tom volunteered to help maintain the gardens at the Archbishop's House at Westminster Cathedral. He'd water the plants, care for the patio and get rid of the weeds that would grow around the Cathedral itself. Tom was on first-name terms with Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor, the then Archbishop of Westminster. One day, he and a mate were told to get 'suited and booted' before coming in to volunteer. That day, the Queen paid the Archbishop a visit, and Tom and his mate met her. "We didn't have to do anything, just stand there and look smart." The Queen walked around and said hello to them but didn't say anything else, but Tom said Prince Phillip was very chatty.

Tom's 85 now, and his running days are over. He recently tripped on a loose manhole cover while running for a bus and tore a hamstring. He also suffers from bad feet and regularly has to see a podiatrist. I asked him if he ever did all that stretching like the joggers one sees on the streets today. He said nobody ever did back then, "The only stretch I've ever done is reaching for the soap in the post-run bath."

John never married. It's just something that never happened. He went out with a few girls for about a year or so. He never fell out with them, but long-term relationships just didn't happen. Tom told me, "Things you don't do in life, you regret. But when you think about it, what's the point of regret? It hasn't happened, and that's the end of it." He's philosophical about living alone. He said with a grin that there is a plus side, “If you want to go to the toilet in a hurry - it's always ready for you."

Throughout his whole time in England, Tom has always lived in Battersea. His current home is less than a 10-minute walk from the Falcon pub where, 61 years ago, he first lived and worked. Tom loves all the green space close to his home. He loves the transport system in London and the fact that you can go out and buy a pint of milk at 10pm. You'd never be able to do that in the countryside around Tipperary, where he was born.

Tom said he would never go back to Ireland. "There'd be no point. Now that I am old, I’d have to live in a town - I come from the countryside, so it would be just as different as living here."

Throughout all this time, he has always stuck to The Pledge and has remained a teetotaller. He said the trouble with drink is simple, "One pint isn't enough, two pints is too much, and three isn't half enough - that's how it works."

Alan Hopkins

Alan Hopkins was born in Wicklow in 1940. His father ran a grocery store in the town, set up by his Great-great-grandfather in 1827. 

The shop is still going and is run by one of Alan's nieces. It now sells toys and is the first shop in Ireland to sell Lego after the founder of the famous Danish company visited his shop while on holiday. 

Alan's family are Protestant. He remembers that there was quite a divide between the Catholics and Protestants in Wicklow, and they never really mixed.

Alan has 2 sisters and a brother - his eldest sister is 96 and lives in America. She was a GI Bride, having met an American soldier in WWII when she was in the service. 

Alan's other siblings are 93 and 89 and live in Ireland.

Alan was the youngest by 7 years, his mum being 40 when he was born. She'd often tease him and say he was a mistake as she'd already sold the pram and cot, but she added that he was ‘as cute as a fox.'

Being by far the youngest of his 32 cousins wasn't easy. Everyone was always so much older and bigger than him. Being Protestant, he wasn't allowed to mix with Catholic boys, so he had quite a lonely childhood.

There were only Catholic schools in Wicklow, so Alan, aged 10, was sent off to a Protestant school outside Dublin. He didn't do well at school as he wasn't that academic, and he left at 15. 

Alan's big brother was already looking after the shop, so Alan had to find his own job. 

He got an apprenticeship at a garage in Dublin. He wasn't interested in cars in any shape or form and didn't enjoy the job. He doesn't like pubs or football either, which must have made it hard for him to get along with the other mechanics.

A girl he knew in the village told him she was off to Dublin to do a pattern-cutting course. Alan had always loved clothes and fashion and decided to do the same. 

His parents were supportive of this decision. Alan’s parents weren't prescriptive and let him make his own decisions.

The college and the course were perfect for Alan. It was somewhere where he felt like he belonged. He completed the 2-year course in just 9 months. 

He then got an apprenticeship with Mary O'Donnell. Who was a famous couturier in Ireland. Alan loved his time there but dreamed of going to London. He wanted to 'open up his life.'

Back then, Alan felt that the city of Dublin was still quite a narrow-minded place, and it was much worse in smaller places like Wicklow. Wicklow always felt like a backwater to Alan. There were only 2 newspapers, and they were tabloids. They were also heavily censored - many pages of the British press sold in Ireland were blank or had articles removed due to censorship. When TV came arrived, people could get the BBC and a different POV - but only if their house faced England and had a big enough aerial. 

Alan remembers the first time he arrived in Londons' Victoria Station. He went straight into a nearby Army & Navy store and marvelled at the variety of things on offer. Compared to the shops in Wicklow, this was the most wonderful thing he'd ever seen - it was so exciting. 

Back in the 60s, there was so much work available in the capital that you could leave a job on Friday and start a new one on Monday. Alan got work as a machinist in a company that made ready-to-wear couture. It wasn't long before Alan was promoted to pattern cutter.  

He then began working for the couturier Fredrick Starke, who designed some of the costumes for the actress Honor Blackman in the cult tv series "The Avengers."

This was in 1966, and it was at work that he met Vanessa. She was a fashion graduate from Ravensbourne School of Art and was doing a work placement. 

One night, he asked if she would like to accompany him to the ballet, and they just hit it off. They shared the same interests in cinema, theatre and culture. "We laughed at the same things and just clicked." Alan added, "You either click with people or don't, and Vanessa and I certainly did."

This was the Swinging Sixties, but Alan admitted, "We weren't that swinging - we preferred antiques and history to The Rolling Stones."

They married in 1969.

They looked for a flat and worked their way along the Northern Line until they found somewhere they could afford. The rooms were too small in Stockwell and Kennington, but they loved the greenery and vibrancy of Balham, and that's where they settled. 

The couple had two kids - Sam and Alice. 

In the recession of the 1980s, Alan was made redundant - he used the opportunity to turn his love of antiques into a business and rented a small stall on Portobello Road. He bought "Little bits and pieces" at auction and at the famous Bermondsey market, which opened at 6am every Friday. He'd then clean up what he bought to sell the next day in Portobello.

The trouble was that the couple loved some items so much that they couldn't bear to sell them. Since her fashion student days, Vanessa has always loved antique clothing, accessories and fabric. Over the years, they amassed quite a collection and Alan became known in Portobello for the materials he sourced. 

By then, Vanessa was working in the costume department at the BBC. A costume designer who was working on a period show, asked Vanessa to get Alan to come in to meet her with some of the fabric he'd collected. When she saw it, her eyes lit up, and she bought a lot from him. 

Alan and Vanessa's reputation spread around the BBC, and they began to supply the corporation with more vintage outfits and accessories. 

After a while, the couple realised that what costume designers really wanted was vintage fabric, which would allow them to make authentic costumes to fit the actors perfectly. 

Because of the nature of the fashion business, where there's always a rush for the new, period fabric was never kept, so it became extremely difficult to find. 

The couple searched around and found people who could make reproduction period fabrics based on Alan's huge collection of antique samples. They worked with a silk mill in Norfolk that has been going for 300 years to recreate exact copies of the originals. 

Alan and Vanessa set up a company - 'Hopkins Fabrics,' and the business was hugely successful. Their fabrics were used by costume designers all over the country and often in America too. 

The couple have also published books on their collection in a collaboration with the School of Historical Dress. 

Vanessa's love of history meant she knew how to research and write about the featured items. Alan did all the photography in a spare room of their Balham home.

Cataloguing everything that they have collected was quite an endeavour. They'd actually forgotten just how much they had acquired over the years - they found incredible things like the bonnet from the 17th century. Everyday items of clothing like this are so rare because the working classes wore their clothes until they were threadbare so they rarely survived. It's much easier to find the clothes of the wealthy. 

The couple have been married for 53 years and have lived in the same Balham house for nearly 50. They still love the diversity of Balham and the mixture of cultures. They often jump onto the tube to go to the West End to enjoy theatre, restaurants and ballet. 

They particularly love the cinema and often visit the nearby Clapham Picture house. They try to see a different film every week, from blockbusters to more obscure foreign subtitled films. And, of course, if there’s a period drama showing, there's the added bonus that the couple might get to see some of their own fabrics up on the silver screen.

MARY

Mary and her friend left Tipperary to start jobs as nurses at London’s Whittington Hospital.

They arrived in London about a month before the hospital job was due to start to give them time to get settled.

Mary's friend was a lot more worldly than Mary. She was a bit wild and loved going out. She said to Mary, "Let's get a job now to get money to buy clothes." So the pair got a job at a factory  in Harringay that made thermometers. Mary then got a job as a barmaid in the Medina Pub in Finsbury Park, a job in a pipe factory (The type of pipe you smoke) and then a job in a brewery.

Neither girl got around to taking up the nursing jobs they came to England for. Mary's friend just wanted to have fun, and on reflection, Mary doesn't think she had any intention of becoming a nurse. She just wanted an excuse to come to England and be independent. Mary admits that she was more than happy to tag along with her friend.

If they had a 6am start at the brewery. They'd stay out dancing at The Gresham Dance Hall until 1 am and then go home and chat all night, drinking fizzy orange. They didn't bother going to bed; they'd go straight to work.

At the brewery, they'd play loud pop music all day on the tannoys, and it was Mary's job to check that the labels were straight as the beer bottles passed by on the conveyor belt. She'd often be so tired from all the dancing and chatting the night before that she'd sometimes doze off at her station. Her boss would wake her up by dropping a beer bottle into the 'reject bin' right next to her, causing it to smash loudly. It was all done in good humour, and Mary loved the job.

At another dancehall, St Olive's, she got together with Richard from County Clare. "He was tall and slim, just how I liked them" She already knew him a bit through his brothers, but after that dance, they got serious and, after a couple of years, got married. Everything was going great, and they had 2 sons. Mary got an evening job behind the bar of a local bingo hall while Richard babysat. These were good times.

They then found a lovely flat in Stoke Newington. It was a great flat but moving there was a big mistake. It was away from all their Irish friends and family, so it was just the two of them and the kids. It wasn't long before they realised they didn't have much in common, and Richard left when the kids were around 5 and 6.

Mary had to bring her boys up on her own. By then, she had a job in the office for a company that was involved in buying and selling all sorts of different things, and the bosses really helped Mary out. They gave her an oil heater to keep the flat warm and a whole load of new clothes for her and the kids. It was a tough time, but Mary managed to get by.

Twenty years passed. One night, Mary was in a pub with a group of friends. She was coming out of the ladies when she was intercepted by Pat. He was a Mayo man she knew from when she first came to England in the early sixties. She'd always liked Pat, and it transpired that he had always loved her. He thought she was 'Marriage material’ but he was too shy to ask her out even though they lived in the same rented house where Pat slept in the room directly above Mary.

They are finally a couple now. They don't live together, but see each other most days. Mary likes it that way. She wants to keep her independence.

Pat says he wishes he'd had the courage to ask Mary out back when they shared a house. After all, he often jokes, “I was sleeping on top of you every night anyway.”

Theresa

Theresa loved school, and her favourite subject was maths. She remembers crying when the snowdrifts around her family farm in County Leitrim meant she couldn't walk the 4-mile journey to class. She was the eldest of 8, and unlike Theresa, her younger siblings were delighted to be missing lessons.

She left school at 14 and got a job at McGowan's, the village shop (Now a 'Spar' minimart). She worked there for a while, but when her mum had to go into hospital to get her varicose veins sorted, Theresa stayed home to look after her siblings. She did this for over a year as her mum didn't heal properly due to a piece of gauze left inside her wound from the operation.

At 16, she got a live-in job working for a vet and his wife across the border in Belleek. She helped look after their newborn baby and answered the phone in the vet's office. She got half a day off a week. She would work for four weeks straight so she could have a whole weekend at home.

On one of those weekends, some cousins who'd moved to London returned to her village on holiday and asked Theresa if she wanted to go back with them.

Her parents weren't too pleased about her just taking off, but she was 17 and wanted the adventure.

She took the boat with her cousins and stayed at her auntie's in Fulham. Within a couple of days, she had a job working in a Lyons Tea House in Victoria. Because she was good at maths, her bosses saw how quickly she added up the takings and promoted her to supervisor. She had to travel all over London to work in different branches. (There were around 200Lyons Tea Houses in those days). The size of London was a shock for Theresa, but she got used to hopping on a bus or the tube in no time.

Theresa always sent money home to her mum and dad, and when her younger siblings moved over, she made sure that they did too.

She met her husband, John McGowan, at the newly opened Hibernian club on Fulham Broadway. He was from Boyle in County Roscommon and worked behind the bar. He was also in a small band with his brother, playing Ceili and other Traditional Irish music. Theresa remembers how smart he looked in the white jackets all the bartenders had to wear.

They courted for about six years while saving to get married. They went dancing, to the cinema and visited each other's families. But sex before marriage was unthinkable in those days.

They tied the knot at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in Fulham in 1963. After marrying, they rented a flat before buying a house in Fulham, where they lived for 20 years. Theresa still has the first piece of furniture she bought, a dressing table. She joked that it must be an antique now.

By then, John got a job for London Transport. Theresa and John tried for years to start a family. Teresa did eventually get pregnant, but she lost the baby. She couldn't go through that experience again, so the couple signed up with an adoption agency.

Around this time, Theresa was learning to swim. After a lesson, she got chatting with a woman about her situation. A few days later, the woman phoned and said she was looking after a young girl who was just about to have a baby. The girl, originally from Donegal and unmarried, wanted to put the baby up for adoption.

Theresa and John met the girl at the hospital just after she had given birth. They all got on well, and she agreed to let them have the baby. It was a private adoption which in those days was legal. (It became unlawful just a year later).

Theresa called the baby Elaine at the request of the young girl. The baby's second name is Philomena, after the lady from the swimming class that made the introduction.

Suddenly, without any notice, Theresa and John were home with a tiny 9-day-old baby. Luckily, her sister-in-law lived close by and had given birth six months before, so she had lots of stuff to lend Theresa. Of course, being the eldest of eight meant that Theresa was used to looking after babies.

They adopted their second daughter, Siobhan, through the official channels. Theresa made her second name Mary Rose, the biological mother's name.

Theresa loved being a mum. After waiting so long for children, she poured her whole life into caring for her daughters. When they started school, she even worked as a dinner lady to ensure that her holidays coincided with the school breaks.

When John was in his mid-50s, he was diagnosed with bladder cancer. He had radiotherapy to shrink the tumour and then an operation. At first, he seemed to recover, but the disease had spread to his liver, and he passed away at just 57. This was devastating for Theresa and her teenage daughters. But she didn't have time to grieve because Theresa started feeling unwell herself. She had pains in her abdomen and would often vomit. She was given treatment for stomach ulcers, but her condition worsened.

One day, she felt so poorly that she went to the hospital and refused to leave until they took her condition more seriously. Eventually, the doctors agreed to do an exploratory operation. After the procedure, the surgeon said he had to remove half of her stomach because she had cancer. She started her six months of chemo on the anniversary of John's death.

Her treatment ended 25 years ago, and Teresa made a full recovery. At 55, Theresa was a young widow, but she kept busy. She was always there for her daughters when they needed a babysitter. She picked up the grandkids from school and would often cook their dinner. Because of this, she is close to her seven grandchildren and sees them often. Both her daughters live close by. One works in a nursery, and the other is a hairdresser and always cuts Theresa's hair.

Theresa thinks she is lucky because, unlike many families that move all over the place, her entire family all live close to each other.

Theresa loves visiting Ireland for holidays but going there to live is out of the question. Her whole life is now in South London.

ALI

When Ali was 12, his family moved from Pakistan to Ballyhaunis in County Mayo.

His uncle had set up a meat factory in nearby Ballaghaderreen that exported Irish lamb and beef to Muslim countries. The meat was Halal which meant that it had to be slaughtered strictly according to the demands of the Koran. Each time an animal is killed, its death is marked with a prayer. Because of this, Islamic slaughtermen came to live in the town with their families. This was great for the local economy because the farmers had a steady demand for their livestock and got a better price.

When Ali left school, he worked in the factory. One day he was out walking his dog when he got chatting with a man at a bus stop. His name was John Murphy, and he was waiting for his daughter. As Ali and John spoke, she got off the bus. When he saw her for the first time, Ali fell in love.

The feeling must have been mutual because she asked Ali if he wanted to come into their house for a cup of tea. Ali replied that he couldn’t because he was fasting.

She asked him why he was fasting, and he told her it was because he was a Muslim. She didn’t know what a Muslim was, so Ali gave her a book about the religion, which she loved reading. She liked how ‘everything was so clean and straightforward.’ and decided that she wanted to become a Muslim too. Shortly after, she converted and changed her name.

They married in Dublin Mosque. The whole family came to the wedding, and Mr Murphy signed the papers.

Ali gets on very well with his in-laws. He told me his mother-in-law has driven all her life but never taken her driving test. He also has a real affinity with the Irish people. Ali said, “Look what the English have done to us? They have poisoned the land. All the Irish children go to England, America and even Australia because the English left them nothing in Ireland.” He joked that in Galway, they say, “When you flush the toilet, flush it hard because it’s a long way to London.”

The local priest was against the wedding and said that Ali would take her back to Pakistan and that her family would never see her again.

After the wedding, the couple went to Mecca to perform the Umrah. They then went to Pakistan to meet Ali’s relatives. Ali’s wife loved it so much there that when it was time to return to Ireland, she wanted to stay longer. Ali had to return to work, so they agreed that she would stay for a couple more weeks before coming home.

When Ali returned, he joked to the priest that he had left his wife, a prisoner in Pakistan. The priest was furious until Ali’s father-in-law told him that Ali was pulling his leg.

In the mid-nineties, there was a huge fire at the meat factory, bankrupting the business, and Ali was out of a job. There was hardly any other work locally, so Ali and his wife came to England. At first, they settled where many of the Irish who came to London ended up, Kilburn. Now they live in Ilford to the East of London.

Ali is a bus driver. It was the only work he could get in London. However, he enjoys it. His real passion is gardening. He loves colourful flowers and showed me his garden on his phone through the CCTV cameras he has set up to keep an eye on his plants.

Ali has 6 kids and has been happily married for 24 Years. I asked if I could go to his house and photograph him with his wife. He replied that he would love that, but his Irish wife has become a much stricter Muslim than he is and wouldn’t want to be photographed.

JUNE

June was born in 1937 in Dublin. She was the second eldest of eleven kids. Her family lived in a "two-up, two-down.” It was a tight squeeze, and June had to share a bed with three of her sisters. On her wedding day, she joked to her new husband, "I'm only marrying you, so I get to share a bed with just one person.'

When she was 13, June got a job at a fruit and veg shop. She never officially left school; she just didn't go back. She didn't enjoy the job much; June was a proper Dublin girl and not a country girl, so spending all day cutting the heads off cabbages didn't suit her at all.

Her Granddad then got her a job in a printers, which she much preferred. When she was 16 all the printers in Ireland went on strike, so June couldn't work. Instead, she took her younger brothers and sisters for a day out to the park. It was in the park that she met Tom. Tom and his mate were both in the army. They got chatting and arranged to meet in the 'Pheno" - the Phoenix Cinema. At the cinema, June was with her friends, and Tom was with his. He asked her to come and sit with him, and June said, 'Only when the lights go down.'

They became a couple and got married in 1957 and had 'A House Wedding'. The ceremony takes place in the church, but then after, everyone goes back to the house. Her dad, who was also in the army, borrowed some tables and benches from the barracks - they turned up in an army truck. Some barrels of beer were delivered, and they were all set. When Tom was decommissioned, they decided to come to England as there weren't many jobs in Dublin. They flew with Air Lingus, and the ticket cost £8 for the two of them. Neither had been on a plane before. The flight was fine but what really bothered June was the Escalators at London Airport (Now Heathrow). She'd never seen one before and refused to step on. Tom had to lift her onto it.

They got a room with Tom's brother in Kingston in the South West of London. June got a job at 'VP Wines' in Kingston. Apparently 'Vine Products' had the largest winery in Europe at the time. They used to make Sweet Wines, Sherries and Whisky. Junes job was on the production line. Someone up the conveyor belt would put the cork in the bottle, and June had to hammer it in with a giant wooden mallet. Being just twenty and quite clumsy, she wasn't very good at it and only lasted three weeks. 

During their first year in England, the winter was freezing. They didn't have any heating, just a small gas fire which they'd only put on when they could afford it. Fortunately, June's sister-in-law worked in a hotel in Uxbridge. In the evenings, the family would sit in the hotel kitchen next to the ovens to keep warm and tell each other ghost stories.

June did various jobs during this time before having her first child, a baby girl called Colette. Tom was working as a carpenter. June hated Sundays in England because back home in Ireland, she'd always go and visit her Aunts and Uncles. She especially missed seeing her Aunty Mary in Cabra in NW Dublin, who had 13 kids. June remembers playing outside with all her cousins. Every time her aunty made pancakes, she'd put them on the window cill to cool, and a hand would come in and take one. Sundays just weren't the same in England. June and Tom then had their second baby, a boy. Finding somewhere to live was difficult. 'People didn't want you if you were Irish, especially if you had two kids - one kid maybe but two, no.'

They ended up in a tiny room with one bed, a mattress on the floor and their baby's cot in the corner. June made it as comfortable as she could. She put a nice throw on the bed and kept the place spotless. One day, the man from the council came to visit. He looked at the room and said, "You have this done up like a little palace here, but I think you will prefer this", and he threw some keys on the bed. The couple got the council house which June has now lived in for 59 years.

Tom and June had two more kids, Tom continued working as a carpenter, and once the kids got older, she got a job working in a children's home. It was a good job but quite challenging at times - the girls were worse than the boys - one even threatened to beat June up, and she was only 13. Every day, June would cycle to work and back.

Tom was complaining of not feeling well. He was getting pains in his legs and feeling nauseous. He went to the doctor, who told him to rest but never checked his blood pressure or did any blood tests.

It was a beautiful day in April, and June and Tom were sitting in the garden having a cup of tea. Tom suddenly started talking about when they were young. Back then, he always wore a very long coat and would have his dark hair slicked back. They used to go courting in 'Chicken Lane' for a kiss and a cuddle. One night, they came out of the lane, and two teenagers spotted them, looked at Tom in his long coat, and said, 'oh Jesus, will you look at that? - it looks like Dracula.'

June said she laughed when he reminded her of the Chicken Lane story, but it was strange because reminiscing wasn't Tom's thing. She asked what had got into him, and he replied, "Nothing, I just got thinking about the past, that's all."The next day June got back from work on her bike. The shed door was open as usual for her to put her bike in, but when she looked towards the house, June saw Tom lying dead on the patio. He'd had a massive heart attack.

June thinks that Tom had a sense that he would die that day. He'd left the garden so tidy and had even taken the garden rubbish to the skip. After she discovered Tom had died, June went into the kitchen. She could see that Tom had washed and put his mug away which was strange as he would always leave it out because he always had another cup of tea later. June recalls the morning of Tom's death. She was getting ready for work, and he'd just opened a tax-rebate letter from HMRC, which contained a £500 cheque. June remembers him patting her on the bum and saying, 'we're in the money, girl' - it was the last thing he ever said to her.

This was 1993, and Tom was just 59. June was devastated. But she had kids and Tom's family to think of. She had to be strong. She carried on working and threw herself into doing the garden. Her kids said their dad would be proud of how well she'd looked after his garden. Her In-laws were a great support, but some mornings she would wake up sad and have, "A good old bawl." It was lonely, especially in the Wintertime. In the Summer, she was out in the garden doing stuff, but during the dark winter evenings, there was nothing to do apart from being alone. The family would visit, which was great, and she loved all the interaction, but the thing she missed the most was "Doing nothing...but with Tom." When you are a 56-year-old widow, the world is made up of couples.

June spent 25 years on her own.

She belonged to British Legion with Tom, but after he died, she stopped going because she thought everyone was looking at her. She felt self-conscious as a young widow. Eventually, her brother-in-law and his wife convinced her to start going again. There were always dances at The Legion. June would joke that she was 'The Spare wheel.'

It was at one of these dances that she met Lester.

One evening, 'He walked the plank' across The Legion and asked June for a dance. The couple have now been together for 4 years. Lester is a proper South Londoner. He grew up in Clapham and worked as an electrician for most of his life. His wife had passed away years ago. June's relatives' don't mind that Lester is a Cockney - they all get on well. They've been together for 4 years - they live in June's house but haven't married, "We are doing what our generation couldn't do in the 60s. If it's good enough for the young people nowadays - it's good enough for us.”

June is 85 now. All her life, she has loved music and dancing. Especially the songs of Frankie Laine...

I believe for every drop of rain that falls, a flower grows

I believe that somewhere in the darkest night, a candle glows

I believe for everyone who goes astray

Someone will come to show the way

I believe, I believe

June will visit Ireland on holiday, but she won't go back to live, "I belong in England now. I'm Irish, but I belong in England."

SEAN

Sean is 81 and originally from Donegal.

In 1959, when Sean was 18, he made his way to Dublin and got the ferry at Dún Laoghaire to England. He worked ‘On the lump’ (casual work) as a labourer.

He went wherever the work was and would get the coach all over England. He worked at power stations in Nottingham. At Fords in Langley and at the Mini Minor factory in Oxford. Every Friday, he’d send what he could to his mum back home.

Eventually, Sean settled in London where he met his wife Julie at the Garryowen Dance hall in Hammersmith.  The Garryowen is an old Irish quickstep, hence the name of the club. Jim and Julie were happily married for 47 years. Julie passed away 2 years ago.

I asked Sean what it was he liked about Julie, he paused, and replied, “We’d be here all day if I started to tell you.”

Monica

Monica Wade was born on the 19th of June 1931. She is 92 years old.

She was bought up on the family farm in Tipperary. The neighbouring farmer was very wealthy. He had a lot of land and cattle, but he was old. He wanted to marry Monica, who was just 16 at the time, and her family was all for this, but Monica, who has always been a strong-willed person, had other ideas. She didn't want his money, and she certainly didn't want to be married to an old man, so she told him to 'get moving' and got moving herself. She just walked out of the house, left Ireland and got a job as a nurse in Midlothian, Scotland.

She then moved to Tooting in SW London and worked as a nurse at St Georges hospital. This was right at the start of the formation of the NHS.  Back then, in 1948, the now 1600-bed teaching hospital was little more than a few huts (Called the Fountain Hospital). But the regime was still stringent.

Every morning the matron would stand at the front door and inspect all the nurses. Monica, about 18 then, still remembers her shouting across the room, "Nurse Butler, your stockings are crooked," or, "Those counterpanes (bedspreads) are not straight on that bed - go and do it now!'." Monica said it was hard work, and they kept a 'tight reign on us', but it was much better than being stuck on a farm milking cows.

Monica got paid £8 per month and lived in the nurse's quarters which were 'lovely and clean'. Monica has always been very scrupulous about tidiness. Her room in the care home where she now lives is immaculate, and she always takes care of her appearance.

She met her husband at the Shamrock dancehall in Elephant and Castle in nearby Southwark. His name was Steven, but everyone knew him as Noel. He came from Tipperary Town and worked on the railways. Monica liked him immediately because 'I felt sorry for him. He was a young Irishman, and I was a young Irish girl. I had everything - my life as a nurse was clean and perfect - but he had to live in lodgings - the English landladies would throw those poor Irish boys anywhere in a room with 6-7 others."

The couple had three kids. A son who was a talented footballer - Roger Wade. In the late 70s, he played for Tottenham Hotspur Youth team and the Republic of Ireland national team before a knee injury ended his career.

The eldest daughter Amelia was a successful woman with a couple of businesses. When she was 60, she died of cancer. Monica said it was incredibly tough burying her daughter. Her remaining daughter Louise lives close to the care home and always visits her. She also phones every day.

Monica and Noel had a great life together. She told me that he was a good man and loved the children, which to Monica, is the most important part. Noel retired with a good pension, and the couple travelled all over. They visited NY 3 times and even made it to Australia.

Noel passed away 24 years ago, and Monica still misses him terribly. She told me that she missed his smile. A smile is evident in a framed photo Monica keeps of Noel close to her armchair.

Throughout her life, Monica has always kept busy. She did voluntary work at the care home where she now lives. "I have a lovely room, and the garden here is wonderful, and the nuns are very good" She does French lessons, the prayer group, and painting. "I keep going - It's good for my brain."

Her room is full of photos of her and her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Despite having 7 falls, Monica is determined to keep active, her walker keeps her mobile, and she keeps some little dumbbells by her chair to keep her fit.

Monica’s mantra is - "keep going - always look ahead. If you get tired, sit down for a bit, wait, and then get up and keep going. Don't moan; always get on with it."

Jimmy McGrath

Jimmy was born in Belfast in 1939. He went to a tough school run by 'The Christian brothers'. He said the worst part was going home as a 14-year-old with swollen hands from a caning and getting a slap from his mum because 'Those priests must've had a good reason for hitting you.' He left school at 15 and worked as a labourer.

There wasn't a lot of money in Belfast, so at 18, he decided to move to London. His Uncle Huey took him to the docks to see him off. As Jimmy boarded the boat, his uncle said, 'You'll be back in a couple of weeks - you'll get your fill of Pagan England and the foods no good - you'll be back alright.' Jimmy admitted he got very homesick and if his uncle hadn't said that, he probably would’ve come back but stayed to prove him wrong. Looking back on it, he thinks his uncle was perhaps doing a bit of reverse psychology. 

Jimmy had a friend called 'Big Finn Mulligan' who knew of digs in the Caledonian Road. Jimmy shared a single room with 3 other men and continued to work as a labourer but earned enough to send money home each week to his mum. After 3 years, someone asked if he’d help out behind the bar of Shamrock Pub in the city (since demolished). Jimmy loved it - his career as a publican had begun.

He started as a barman and then became a manager and, at 22, got his first pub - The Champion in Wells Street just north of Oxford Street. Jimmy met his future wife in the bar. She was a nurse from County Meath and he said meeting her was just like the Frank Sinatra song 'Some Enchanted Evening' - 

Some enchanted evening, you may see a stranger,

You may see a stranger across a crowded room,

And somehow you know, you gonna know even then,

That somehow you'll see her again and again.

Some enchanted evening, someone may be laughing,

You may hear her laughing across a crowded room,

And night after night, as strange as it seems,

The sound of her laughter will sing in all your dreams.

They married in Laytown, County Meath in The Irish Republic. Jimmy's friends crossed the border from Belfast to attend the wedding. After a few drinks, there was a punch-up at the reception between the locals and Jimmy's mates, who were accused of being Orange Men - this made no sense as they were all Catholic. 12 were arrested. Fortunately, Jimmy had already left for his honeymoon in Cork. They had 3 kids and the family have always remained close.

Every week, Jimmy, his kids, 4 grandkids and great-granddaughter get together for Sunday lunch. It's something they always did when Jimmy's wife was alive. Sadly, after 52 years of marriage, she passed away in 2015 from lung cancer. Jimmy is 81 now and looks good for his age. He said, "I have all my own 'Hampsteads' and my own 'Barnet'."

He goes back to Ireland on holiday, but his home is London. Jimmy told me that the whole time he's lived in the Capital, he never received any prejudice or racism. He knows that it has happened to other members of the Irish community, but he personally has never experienced it. Jimmy loves running pubs. He has 3 now. The one we met in is right in the middle of Hampstead, and famous writers, actors and musicians have drunk there. Jimmy has their pictures up on the walls. From George Orwell to Mick Jagger to Dame Judy Dench to Harold Pinter and Robert Louis Stevenson. Jimmy's love of being a landlord must be infectious because his eldest son and his daughter now run their own pubs too.

Jimmy's done well for the son of a labourer from a tough working-class area known as The Market - in Jimmy's words, 'It was the Ghetto of Belfast.' 

He always remembered his mum saying she wished they could get out of the slums and move up to The Cavehill Road, where it was much posher. So years later, as a surprise, Jimmy and his brothers clubbed together and bought her a house there. They made her dreams come true, and she absolutely hated it. She said the people were too snobby and desperately missed the community back at The Market. So she moved back to her original house in 'The Ghetto.'

Years ago, Peter O'Tooles' mum used to come into a pub that Jimmy ran off Baker Street. She was an unassuming old lady with a small dog. She would quietly sit in the corner, drinking a bottle of Guinness. One day, a very theatrical type came into the bar. He was flamboyant and loud as he ordered his drink, and Jimmy asked him what he did for a living. "I'm an actor, of course," replied the man, "I've been on the television." Jimmy said, "That lady over there, her son is an actor too." The man looked over at the little old lady with her Guinness and said rather patronisingly, "Really? Has your boy been in anything?' she replied, "He was in a film called Lawrence of Arabia." 

The man asked, "But did he have a speaking part?" the old lady replied, "Oh yes, dear, he played Lawrence." 

Liam and Edward

Liam and Edward are Chelsea Pensioners and Live in The Royal Hospital, Chelsea.

Liam (On the Left) is 78. He was born in Dublin, Southern Ireland. He was one of 9 kids, and the family lived in just 2 rooms. When he was 16, he crossed the border to Omagh, intending to join the Inniskilling Fusiliers. But he was too young, so he joined the boys' regiment of The Irish Guards. 

When he was shown his bed in the barracks, he couldn't believe that he had a whole bed to himself. Until then, he'd always shared with 2 of his brothers.

Liam had an uncle who was high up in the IRA. His uncle said, 'If you join the Irish Guards, don't think that if you leave them, things can ever return to the way they were between us." Liam went on to spend 29 years in the Army.

Once he left, he got a job as a technician on London Underground. He said you do so many courses and briefings in the Army that you very quickly get used to listening and learning. Because of this, he found civilian work easy. Once he retired, he spent a lot of time in Dublin but returned to England and became a Chelsea Pensioner so he could be close to his kids and grandkids, who had settled nearby.

Edward is 94. He's from Londonderry in Northern Ireland.

Like Liam, he wanted to be in the Inniskilling Fusiliers and, being 17, was allowed to join up. He was posted to Austria and then Hong Kong, which he said was a fantastic experience for an 18-year-old. He was then posted to Malaya during the uprising. In the jungle, soldiers were always getting leeches attached to their skin. Being a non-smoker, Edward would have to borrow a cigarette from a fellow soldier to burn them off. After Malaya, he was sent to Jamaica on R&R. He joked that he saw more fighting on a Saturday night in the 'Silver Slipper' club in Kingston than he saw in Malaya. 

In 1950, he returned to England on The SS Empire Ken, which was full of young Jamaican Nurses coming to the UK to work for the NHS. He volunteered to fight in Korea with The Royal Ulster Rifles. However, he was told to remain in the UK to train National Service recruits because he had small arms training. He'd met his future wife by then, and she convinced him not to extend his military service and to apply for a job at British European Airways, where she worked. Edward eventually became a sales manager for Eire Lingus. He lived in Stockholm, Copenhagen, Paris and Switzerland with his wife and 2 children.

After retirement, he lived in Enfield in North London. After his wife passed away, Edward couldn't see the point of rattling around in the family home alone, so he applied to become a Chelsea Pensioner. He joined just as we went into lockdown during the Covid pandemic, so at first, the place felt a bit like a prison, but now he's settled in, he loves the place. "Why wouldn't I?" he said with a smile, "I live in the biggest house in Chelsea.”

Mary Duffy

Mary's grandfather Patrick was a sales agent for the Irish Independent Newspaper.

One evening, as usual, he was on his way to Kilkenny Station to take delivery of the parcels of newspapers. From nowhere, an out-of-control army truck mounted the pavement and came careering towards him. Patrick knew that a few feet away was a gate and that if he went through it, he could get out of the way. It was a gate that he had passed through hundreds of times before, but for some inexplicable reason, on that fateful night, it was locked, and Patrick was crushed to death.

Mary's grandmother, Johanna, suddenly had 12 children to bring up without a husband.

Perhaps someone high up in the army had a word with Patrick's bosses because Johanna was given her dead husband's job. It was highly unusual for a woman to hold such a role, but it meant she could feed her kids. She successfully raised them all, but, like most young people in Ireland back then, one by one, they went off to England to find work all apart from Mary’d mum.

Mary's dad also decided to go to England and told Mary's mum to leave Johanna and come with him. By then, Johanna was elderly and would have been left all alone. So Mary's mum refused, and she and Mary stayed behind to look after her. Mary's dad went anyway. He returned to Ireland during his holidays, and sent money to Mary's mum. However, when Mary was about 10, he stopped visiting and sending money, and she never saw him again.

Mary enjoyed school, but in her last year, she got jaundice and missed her exams.

When she was 16, she had to get a job. There were two Deloughry brothers in Kilkenny. One ran the hardware store, and the other was a tax collector. Mary got work as a secretary for the brother working in the tax office. She didn't want her friends to know because many of them were getting paid cash, and she knew they would worry that she would spy on them for the taxman. So when they asked where she was working, she simply said, "For Deloughry," Her friends all assumed it was in the hardware store.

Eventually, someone she knew came to pay his tax and saw her behind the typewriter. Her friends wouldn't talk to her, but time passed, and when none of them got a visit from the taxman, they realised that Mary wasn't spying on them, and things returned to normal.

When Mary was 18, she worked for The Irish Independent just like her grandfather and grandmother. Her role was to update the newspapers sent to the town from Dublin with the day's most up-to-date sports and news. This was dictated to her over the telephone in the evening. Mary then had to type the news onto a stencil, which was then run through the press to complete that day's paper.

When Johanna passed away, Mary's mum was free to come to England, and Mary went with her. The pair shared a room at an Irish friend's house in the London suburb of Penge.

Mary initially worked as a secretary for a motorbike firm called "Pride and Clarkes" in Brixton. She then took a secretarial position at a pharmaceutical firm, "Burroughs and Wellcome" in Penge, where Mary's mother worked, so they could travel to and from work together.

One night, the family they were staying with had friends over. Mary remembers noticing that one of them had 'nice shoulders', and he must've spotted Mary because he asked her out. Mary replied, "Ask my mum". Joseph Duffy was a paint sprayer from Ballybay in County Monaghan, and when he asked Mary's mum, she approved.

Their first date was at the Essoldo Cinema in Penge to watch a cowboy film. It wasn't long before Joseph asked Mary to marry him. She kept refusing because she didn't want to leave her mum alone. History would have repeated itself, but Joseph was different to Mary's dad. He said he'd find a place that had room for all three of them. He stuck to his word and found a flat in Penge with a spare bed for her mum, so the pair married.

Joseph had a big family, many of whom had come from Ireland and settled in Islington, North London. Through his family, they found out that there was a 2-bed flat going on Popham Street in Islington. Mary had 3 kids by then and a fourth on the way.

All 7 of them, Including Mary's mother, lived in that small flat. Mary recalls that the place, by today's standards, would be considered a slum, but everyone back then was in the same boat. There was a WW2 bomb site directly opposite, and all the flats were run down. However, the mainly Irish inhabitants kept their flats spotless and would sweep their front steps daily. It was great because so many of Joseph's family lived nearby. She was the first to get a washing machine, and Joseph's sisters would come around to do their washing and have long chats. Mary had happy times living there.

When they demolished Popham Street for modernisation, the family moved to the Canonbury Court Estate in Sebbon Street, Islington. Mary’s mum always stayed living with the family and Mary looked after her right up until she passed away in St Bartholomew's hospital in November 1976, aged 69.

When they modernised the Canonbury court estate after her mother's death, Mary and the family moved around the corner to a flat in Richmond Grove.

Mary's kids have their own families now, and Joseph passed away 12 years ago when he was 86. He's buried in Finchley cemetery with Mary's mum, his brother and wife, 2 sisters and a nephew, plus many good friends.

Mary has her plot sorted next to Joseph and jokes that 'The Duffy's are taking over the cemetery'.

Mary is 88 now and lives in a care home. She 'doesn't mind' living there - "It's the nearest I could get to living at home, and there are some very nice people here."

She goes to mass every day. "It only takes an hour, and nowadays, I've always got an hour to spare."

Philomena

Philomena was born in Waterford in 1940.

When she left school, she got to work as a live-in nanny, looking after a baby while the parents went to work. She was 14 years old.

A couple of years later, she heard that a job was going in London. A girl she knew worked in a big house in Finchley and was moving on. She asked Philomena if she wanted to replace her.

Philomena got the train to Rosslare, the boat across to England and then the train to Paddington. She had arranged for her brother Eddy to meet her at the station. As the train got closer to the city, she became increasingly anxious that he wouldn't be there. There were no mobile phones back then. Everything had been organised by letter. "I was just an innocent country girl going to the big city all on my own. To this day, I can still visualise it, seeing my brother standing there waiting for me on the platform. I was so very relieved."

Philomena lived in the house where she worked. Her employers owned a factory, and when they went to work, Phil stayed home with the granny and did the housework. It was a good job and during the Summer holidays, Philomena worked at Butlin’s in Minehead on the Somerset coast. She had a lot of fun working in the holiday camp and met some interesting people.

Back in London, Philomena gradually got to know other Irish people that worked in the city and started going to dances and making friends.

At the dances, the men would approach the women and ask them to dance. Philomena remembered that If a woman said no, the men often said, "Well, what the feck did you come here for then?” One man Phil didn't say no to was Alphonsus. He was a painter from Limerick, and Phil liked that he was tall, 'fairly good looking' and a good dancer.

Alphonsus was named after the parish where he was born, but everyone knew him as ‘Fonzey.' They married in Mattison Road, Harringay. They couldn't afford a honeymoon, "In those days, we were lucky to get a day out.” The couple had three boys and a good marriage and always lived around the 'Haringey ladder' (A group of roads laid out in a way that, on a map, they look just like a ladder)

Philomena did many jobs over the years. She worked in a bar, an office and was a school cleaning lady; she always kept busy. Throughout this time, Fonzey worked as a painter and decorator.

Alphonsus passed away in 2008.  Half of his ashes are in Ireland, and the other half are in London.

Philomena visits Ireland every year. She has no regrets about moving to London. "I can't say my life didn't go to plan; I have my boys and can't complain."

Jim ‘Two Brews’

Jim is originally from just outside of Dublin. He came to London in the '50s to work as a labourer. He said it was marvellous being in London in those days as there was so much going on. Everyone would dress up smart, had money in their pockets, and just wanted to have a good time. He said everyone looked good and "we all smoked, went to dancehalls and the dog track - it was a fantastic exciting time, and best of all, you could get 8 pints for a Quid." He told me that coming from a quiet place in Ireland to busy London was like going to paradise.

I asked him what he was doing sitting near a bus stop in Clapham Junction, and he said that he was waiting for a woman. He said that he wasn't sure if she'd show, but he wasn't bothered. If she didn't, he'd pop over the road to the betting office and put a bet on instead.

I asked him what he was drinking, and he said, 'Two-brews.' This turned out to be a mixture of 'Special Brew' lager and the soft drink ‘Irn-Bru’. I asked if this was an Irish drink because I'd never heard of it. He said no, it was his own personal recipe. He said that the Irn-Bru keeps him 'fit as a fiddle,' and he beat his chest to emphasise this. "I look pretty good for an 81-year old don't I?" he said with a grin.

Josie

Josie was born in 1931 in the tiny village of Ballyagran in County Limerick.

She was one of 6 kids, her dad was a farm labourer, and the family were very poor. One of her earliest memories is hearing her mum in bed screaming from the pain caused by an illness. She died when Josie was 10 and when her youngest sister was just 18 months old.

Josie's father was a good man, but he was just a farm labourer earning a pittance. He couldn't possibly bring up the kids without a wife.

One of Josie's brothers was sent to live with an uncle who was a tailor and became an apprentice. Josie and her sisters were sent to live with Mount St Vincent Sisters of Mercy nuns in Limerick. Josie's father had to make his kids a ward of the court to get them into "The Mount"

Josie loved her time at the convent. It was strict, but the nuns were lovely and gave her a good education. She remembers being so innocent back then, "We were so protected from the real world at the convent. I had no idea what the world was like."

Meanwhile, her dad had moved to London. He got work as a labourer, which paid considerably more than he got back in Ireland. He gradually got enough money to get a flat and start bringing his kids over. Josie's big sister and her brother were already there. He then sent for Josie.

Coming from a convent in Ireland to London was quite a shock for Josie. She initially found London frightening but gradually adapted to life in the city. Her brother was already working as a tailor in a factory making uniforms for the army. He was the foreman, and he got her a job sewing the braid onto the sleeves of the tunics.

Her father allowed her to go out one night a week. She had to be back by midnight, if not, he'd lock the front door, and she'd then have to wait until he'd come down to let her in

She met her husband David at the Blarney Irish dance hall in Tottenham Court Road. She can't remember what it was that attracted her to David. "Something just happened between us" She also liked that he was always respectful and polite. He was from Clonmel in Tipperary and was in the Merchant Navy, so he was often away. When not at sea, he stayed with his parents at their house in Bayswater. His parents were big drinkers and always in the pub, whereas David didn't drink.

When they decided to marry, Josie's father refused permission. He didn't like the fact David's parents were alcoholics. Josie told him that David didn't drink, but he didn't want his daughter to have anything to do with a family like that. The wedding went ahead anyway. Being a talented seamstress, Josie made both her sisters' bridesmaid dresses. But this was a waste of time because their father wouldn't let them go to the wedding. He was a man of principle and wouldn't change his mind.

The couple married in The Church of the Blessed Sacrament in Kings Cross. Josie was 22, and nobody from her family came to the wedding.

The couple had four kids. David left the Merchant Navy and got work as a steward on The Royal Train as it travelled with the Queen from Kings Cross to Balmoral or Sandringham. He remembers once showing Prince Charles and Princess Anne, small children at the time, the kitchens. On these trips, he would have to stay away for the night, and the staff would all go to the pub. It was a ritual, and in Josie's words, "You can guess what happened? My dad was right."

David started drinking and would often come home worse for wear, but he kept Josie's money for the children in his shoe to stop him from spending it in the pub. Over the years, his drinking caused Josie a lot of suffering. She had to accept it or leave, but Josie wasn't the leaving sort. Josie said that despite being aggressive when drunk, David was always good with the kids and never left Josie without.

The family moved to Dulwich, and Josie worked at BHS in Brixton. David then worked as a steward at Lord's cricket ground. The kids all went to South London Catholic schools and did well.

She became involved in St Mary's Church in Clapham. She ran the mums and toddlers club. She then went on to run the senior citizens club. She learnt to drive and always stayed busy. David passed away at 69 from bowel cancer. By then, he'd given up drinking and died sober in his own bed.

Josie lived alone for a long time. But as she got older, she became less mobile, and the church recommended the care home which is run by nuns where she now resides. She loves the home and the nuns that look after her and thinks it's a beautiful place. Apart from going to the salon to get her hair done once a week, she doesn't do much, "I've been there and done that, and now, I'm going to take it easy."

When her mother died - apart from taking her brother on as an apprentice tailor, none of her aunts or uncles would look after Josie and her siblings, so they ended up in the convent. Josie thinks this was the best move her dad could have made because they got a good education and learnt how to 'accept life as it comes.'

She added that when she was a small girl, the nuns looked after her and kept her safe. She smiled and said that now she's a 91-year-old, they are doing exactly the same for her in the care home.

Paddy

According to Paddy, he was born in ‘The Height of the bog’ in the ‘Worst part of North Cork'

This was 1932 and the priest said it was a mortal sin not to have as many kids as possible. Paddy's mum must've been a deeply religious woman, because she had 14. Paddy was the youngest.

Back then, in Paddy's village, a woman that had just given birth was considered 'unclean' and had to be prayed over by the priest to wash away 'the sin of childbirth' before she was allowed back in the church.

The Great Depression in America was affecting people in Ireland because many depended on money sent to them by relatives who had settled in the USA. This money stopped during this time and parts of the country became even poorer.

Paddy's dad worked on the roads for the council and wasn’t earning much. Nobody had any money. Seeing a toilet was 'A mighty big thing', and Paddy never saw one until he was 15. He'd always used a ditch like everyone else.

Paddy's family lived in a tiny house, and 4 brothers shared a bed. Such a big family could never all squeezed in there. They didn’t have to because as soon as the boys were old enough, they would go off working on farms while the girls went off to work in service or in hotels in the nearest town of Newmarket. The only time the family were all under the same roof was at Xmas.

Paddy mainly went to school barefoot. In the autumn, his dad would buy him a pair of wooden clogs (During WW2, leather was scarce), and Paddy would have to keep them intact as best as he could over the winter. Come St Patrick's Day in March, the weather was good enough for him to go barefoot again.

The teachers were strict. Paddy remembers being caned so hard by a master that the cane snapped. Paddy was sent out of the school to cut a new switch from a tree. When he returned with it, the master used it to continue the caning.

When school was finished, just like his brothers, Paddy stood at the crossroads and waited for the farmer to collect him and the other boys in the horse and cart. They'd be made to work for as long as it was daylight, which was up to 18 hours in the summer. They'd be fed in the evening by the farmers wife and would sleep in an outhouse. All the pay went directly to Paddy's dad. Paddy remembers being so hungry that he'd pull a turnip from the ground, rub off the dirt and eat it raw.

Paddy then got a job in a sugar factory in Mallow. It was arduous and hot work. The heavy bags covered in the gritty sugar would take the skin off your shoulders and hands.

In Paddy's opinion, the best thing to happen to Ireland was WW2. When the war ended, there were huge labour shortages in England which gave people like Paddy the opportunity to get better well-paid work across the Irish Sea.

Once he got to London, he settled in Finsbury Park and got work for the construction company Murphys. He worked mainly as a driver and, just like the farmer with his horse and cart back home, Paddy’s job was to drive around the streets of London collecting Irish labourers to  take to the building sites.

In those early days, Paddy never got around to making any 'contribution to The Queen'. Not paying any tax was something that he came to regret. He thinks he’d be a hundred times better off if he'd just paid and said he spent many an hour worrying about a brown envelope from HMRC coming through his letterbox.

Paddy had known Monica virtually his whole life. They were neighbours back in Ireland and were at the same school as kids. She came to London after Paddy, and they married in St Peter-in-Chains Church in Crouch End. They had 2 kids. One now lives in Londonderry, and the other in Brighton.

Monica passed away over 30 years ago from cancer. It was hard; nobody told Paddy she was dying. Monica kept telling him she was improving because she didn't want to worry him. Eventually, the doctor told him that his wife didn't have long to live, which was a complete surprise him. All he could think of saying was, "That can't be right; we are going to a wedding in May.” The doctor replied, "I'm afraid you’ll be going to that wedding alone.”

Paddy still lives in the same house in Finsbury Park that he bought for £3000 not long after he arrived in England. he has colon cancer and cancer in his nose, but so far, it hasn't given him that much trouble.

“Of course I'm pleased I came to England. If it weren't for the war, we would have had to eat each other. Britain is a 'mighty country'. It's a shame it's going so wrong over here now”

Margaret (Peggy)

Margaret Mason was born in Waterford City in 1941. Everyone knows her as Peggy.

She was one of eight kids, and when she was growing up, her family never had any money.

Peggy's mother was originally from County Kilkenny and, like many country girls, came to Waterford City to get domestic work.

Peggy's dad was in the Army, and he was an alcoholic. According to Peggy, the best part about him being in The Army was that he would only come home for two weeks a year on leave. "We grew up without him being around, which was lovely."

When Peggy left school, there was no work. Her mum found out through a friend that jobs were going at a hotel in England. She wrote to the hotel and got 19-year-old Peggy and her sister Betty, aged 24, the job. They got the train from Waterford to Rosslare and then to Paddington.

Peggy was very homesick, but luckily, she had her sister. They worked as chambermaids. The hotel was like Fawlty Towers, a dull and gloomy place. The owner always wore all black. Every Sunday, she would bring the pay packets on a silver tray and hand them out to the staff, who all had to line up.

Peggy then went to work in a hospital as an orderly at Chalfont Saint Peters. It was an okay job, but there wasn't much of a social life especially after Peggy’s sister Betty got married. Peggy decided to return to Waterford.

Peggy got work at a cafe on the quayside. The port in Waterford used to be big, and trawlers from all over Europe would come in. The merchant seaman would go into town at night. If the Irish girls dated them, they were called 'Sailor dolls' It was frowned upon by the locals.

Peggy remembers that the men were always real gentlemen and very respectful. They were good-looking blokes and were smartly dressed in suits. They had lots of money, would take the girls to the cinema, and were very nice.

The pay in the cafe was terrible, so Peggy returned to England and ended up working in a hotel in Somerset. She hated it. She was a city girl in Ireland and had moved to the middle of nowhere in the English countryside. It was a very lonely time for her.

She then got a job at a hotel on the outskirts of London, where she met Bill. When she first saw him, 'her heart skipped a beat' He was a night porter, good-looking, and, above all, had a motorbike.

Bill was from Dublin. His mum was an alcoholic and had six kids. Her husband left her, and she then met a new man in the pub. He was also an alcoholic. He had no wife and seven kids of his own. They then got married and had Bill. One day Bill's dad said, "Let's send all these kids off" So they were all put into an industrial school in Kerry that Christian Brothers ran. Bill was treated terribly at the school and never heard from his parents again. He couldn't go home during the holidays because his parents didn't want to know. During the Summer, he had to work on a farm and sleep with the pigs. It was a cruel and brutal existence for a young boy.

Peggy and Bill became a couple, and not long after, Peggy got pregnant. They weren't married and had to find somewhere to stay. Getting a room when you were Irish was hard enough, but being Irish and pregnant made it doubly hard. Peggy would wear tight skirts to hide her bump, and they pretended they were married. Bill would put on a posh English accent to hide that they were Irish.

Peggy still remembers the signs, "No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs". Bill had a friend who was black, and he remembers going up to the bar to get a round in. The barman said, "I will serve you, but not him", as he pointed to his friend sitting at the table. Bill then had to go over and explain to his friend why they had to leave the pub.

The couple eventually found a place to stay with an Irish family. They were horrible. When the baby, Sylvia, was born, they wouldn't let her leave the pram in the hallway. They lived on the top floor, so Peggy could barely go out. She said they lived in a tiny room and had to dry the towelling nappies in front of a tiny single-bar electric fire.

Peggy never told her mum that she'd had a baby. Not because she would have been angry that Peggy wasn't married. Her mum wasn't at all bothered about that sort of thing. Peggy didn't tell her because she didn't want her to worry as she didn't have a penny to her name.

After a while, her mum became worried anyway because she hadn't heard from Peggy. She went to the Salvation Army, and they sent someone to the hotel where she last worked, and eventually, they tracked Peggy down. The funny thing was that Peggy regularly saw her sister Betty during this time. Betty was in regular contact with their mum but never thought to mention Margaret. When Margaret and her mum were reunited, she told her about Betty. Her mum said she'd been worried sick for nothing and couldn't believe how 'dopey' Betty was.

The couple then moved to a new place. It was another single room but this time with an Italian family. They were nice. The man was an ice cream man, and the lady was a waitress, so they were out most of the time working - they were lovely and much nicer than the Irish landlords. Peggy and Bill married in St Gregory's Catholic Church in Garratt Lane in Wandsworth. A neighbour looked after Sylvia, who was five at the time. The couple then had a son called James and another son seven years later called Mark.

By then, the couple lived in a council place in Balham, and Bill worked in a nearby factory called “WPC Worth” (Now converted into luxury apartments)

Peggy got a job cooking burgers at Wimbledon Greyhound Stadium. She did this for 23 years. It worked well because, as Peggy's job was in the evening, Bill would look after the kids after he finished work.

A few years ago, Peggy got kidney and breast cancer. She recovered, but Bill thought she would die and got depressed. The pills the doctor gave him seemed to make it worse. The abuse he received at the industrial school returned to haunt him, and he was diagnosed with PTSD. He got compensation from the Irish Government, but no money could make up for what he had been through as a child.

Bill and Peggy were married for 60 years. He had diabetes and died of Covid at the very start of the pandemic. Her son remembers seeing his dad in the hospital before Covid hit the news and seeing a whole ward full of people coughing. He said it was obvious that something was very wrong. The family miss Bill terribly.

Bill's stairlift is still there at their Balham home. Peggy says that she will probably have to use it herself one day, but in the meantime, it's handy for taking the ironing upstairs.

The couple used to love going to the betting office together - William Hill on Balham Hill. They never made big bets but loved studying the form and putting money on the horses and greyhounds. Margaret still loves a flutter. She doesn't go into the betting shop anymore; she sends her son instead. She loves the excitement of watching the race, wondering where her horse will be placed. She reads the Racing Post on her Kindle. She loves her Kindle and reads all the time, especially true-life crime stories.

Peggy has now lived in Balham since 1977. "When we first lived here, it was a lovely area. Everyone was the same. We were all ordinary working people, and everyone got along. It's changed so much now that millionaires live on the road, and everyone seems privileged. There was a Coronation Street party up the road, they had a security guard, and if you wanted to go, you had to buy a ticket. That never would've happened back in the old days."

She took her eldest son James back to Waterford for her mother's funeral. He was shocked to see a traditional Irish wake where the body was laid out, and everyone went over to kiss the forehead. She showed him around Waterford, and he said, "What a dump." Everything is all built up now. When Peggy was young, she could cycle out of the town in a few minutes and see all the little caravans where the Irish travellers lived. You'd see them shaving in little mirrors attached to their carts and their kids playing in the fields. Peggy said the young men were such good-looking fellas, but they always stuck to their own. Now it's just housing estate after housing estate.

If Margaret could live her life again, she joked that she would have spent more time hanging around the port back in Waterford. Two of her sister married sailors. One married a first-class engineer who lives in Germany and has two houses. Another sister married another from Holland who is well off and has a big place.

"I married an Irishman who worked in a factory. I'd be rich if I spent more time at that port." It's a story that she always teased Bill with, and she still would if he was with us today.

Albert

Albert was born in Ballymacarrett in East Belfast. Albert's family were Protestant, and they had lots of kids. He was the youngest of 7. His aunty had 16. Someone once said, ‘She was either a good Catholic or a sex-mad Protestant.' The whole family, including the grandparents, lived in a tiny ‘two-up two-down’ terrace with no lights and an outside toilet. When he was 5, his mum became unwell with a heart condition, and as his dad had run off, Albert had to spend time in a children's home. Here, he learnt very quickly how to be a street kid and was in and out of the home until he was fifteen. Albert is the first to admit that he became quite a tearaway. He used to steal newspapers from people's letterboxes and sell them in nearby pubs. He was always skipping school and getting into trouble.

His Grandad would say to his mum, who by then was back at home, 'Where's our wee Albert?' and when his mum told him that they'd put him in the home again, his Granddad would say, "Why do that always pick on him?"

Albert spent a lot of time in a home for young offenders called Malone Training School. He would always try to escape. The first 5 times, he was caught. He was dragged back to the school, had his 'arse caned' and was then made to jump naked into the swimming pool so the chlorine would stop the wounds from the caning from getting infected.

When he turned 14, he stole a suit and a small suitcase from the school storeroom. He broke a window and escaped with his case while still wearing his pyjamas. If a kid ran away from the school, the other boys had the chance of getting 2 months knocked off their sentence if they caught him. Around the school was a dangerous bog that was easy to drown in, and Albert ran into the bog to escape the other boys. They didn't dare follow. Albert said he was fearless at that age, and it was pure luck that he didn't drown.

Albert was a big fan of Tom Sawyer and loved adventure stories. For as long as he could remember, he dreamed of going to London. He put on his stolen suit and thumbed a lift from a lorry driver across the Irish Sea to Stranraer in Scotland. He didn't have a passport or any paperwork. He just hid in the back of the truck. He then thumbed a lift down to London and got a job on a building site.

He was only 14 and was small for his age. In those days, as long as you paid 25% emergency tax which was taken from your salary by your employer, nobody asked questions. You just gave a false name and started work. Albert called himself John West after the tinned fish brand. He did labouring and was the youngest on the building site. He remembers the other builders getting him to use a jackhammer - it bounced him all over the place as he was so small, which they thought was hilarious.

He went looking for somewhere to live. He knocked on the door of one boarding house, and the man that answered the door said, "Can you not read Paddy?" - he then pointed to a sign in the window that said, 'No blacks, no Irish, no dogs.' The guy slammed the door in Albert's face. Albert walked off - but not before chucking a brick through the window. Eventually, he found digs with a Polish couple in Acton. He said the bed was clean, and he got dinner at night and a cup of tea every morning. He loved it - he had his own money and was independent.

Albert then hitched a lift from a lorry driver to Paris. Again, he hid in the lorry and crossed into Europe without any paperwork. He was mesmerised by Paris. He couldn't speak a word of French, so he couldn't get a job. Luckily, some prostitutes took a shine to him. They liked the fact that he was so small and wore a suit. They gave him somewhere to sleep and food. There was nothing sexual about this at all - Albert was just 14. However, they did let him sneak into the Moulon Rouge to peek at the naked girls. He'd steal books and sell them to get a bit of cash. He then thumbed a lift down to St Tropez. He said the place was straight out of the movies, but the people weren't so friendly, and he had to resort to sleeping on the beach. Eventually, he was arrested and sent back to the Reform School in Belfast.

Again he was beaten, caned and chucked into the pool.

Perhaps it was because Albert was chucked into the pool many times, but he became a champion swimmer. He was good at most sports, and because he always wanted to travel and perhaps because he had the surname Nelson, he dreamed of joining the Royal Navy. As soon as he was released from the school, he went to sign up. He easily passed all the fitness tests and then had to have an interview with a petty officer. The interview was going well, and the Petty officer was very friendly. He asked if Albert had ever been in any trouble. Albert said, 'never'. The petty officer smiled warmly and said, come on son, you can confide in me. Have you ever been in any trouble at all? Albert then confessed that over the years, he'd been in court 19 times. The petty officer put his arm around Albert and took him over to a Royal Navy sign above the office door, and said, 'Look at that sign, son,' Albert looked up at the insignia and got quite emotional. The petty officer said, "You are looking at that sign for the last time because the Royal Navy doesn't want little fucks like you. Fuck off up the street to the Army - they'll take anyone."

When Albert was 19, he met Ann. Ann was serving behind the hotel bar where Albert and his then-girlfriend were drinking. As soon as he saw Ann, Albert immediately fell in love with her. He ordered his drinks, gave her a big tip and went back the next day and asked her out. It turned out that her dad owned the hotel where Ann worked and was a very wealthy man. When Albert went to ask him if he could marry his daughter, he told him, "You'll never get any of my money. It all goes to my kids and then to their kids - you're nothing but a partner - you remember that.' Albert was furious and said, 'You can turn all your money into fifty pence pieces and shove it up your arse, because I don’t want it,’ and stormed off, taking Ann with him.

They came to London with just a fiver and found a room in Tufnell Park. Albert started out cleaning windows and worked for two firms at the same time to earn extra money. After a while, he set up his own company, which grew. He then branched out into cleaning chandeliers. His grandfather did this back in Belfast. Albert still remembers him telling him all about it when he was small. He took over the name of his grandfather's business, and Albert's company was a huge success. They've cleaned Chandeliers in Fortnam and Masons, Harrods and Windsor Castle. He bought a big house in St Albans and even had a Rolls Royce for a while.

His marriage to Ann wasn't going so well though. Albert told me it was like 'War of The Roses', and eventually, they divorced. After 6 years, they met again and 'The spark was still there,' so they remarried in Montego Bay in Jamaica. They've since divorced again.

Throughout all his time in England, Albert would always send money back home to his mum. Whenever he was in Belfast, he would go in the back door of the house and up to her room to kiss her good night. One night, he found her stone cold. She had died in bed of a heart attack at just 41.

Albert has always been a bit of a ladies' man. He has 7 kids with 6 different women. He admitted that he does find it hard to say no. Someone once said, "If an attractive woman comes into the room, she can be sure that Albert will make a beeline for her. She can lay him down, scratch his belly and take all his money, and he'll keep coming back for more with a big smile on his face."

Albert is 70 now. He still goes back to Belfast from time to time. Like many Irish that moved to England, the locals mock him a bit, saying, 'Old money-bags is back'. Even though she passed away when Albert was in his twenties, he still misses his mum. Every year Albert has always put an announcement in The Belfast Telegraph to commemorate his mother. When he first put the announcement in the paper, the cost was £3.10, but now, 50 years later, it's £168.

He will always live in London - It's become his home. He has many Catholic and Protestant friends and has always been a real people person. Albert told me that a united Ireland is one thing but what's much better is a 'United people.'

Lily

Lily Fitzpatrick was leaving St Joseph’s Catholic Church in Bunhill Row when I took this shot.
She was born in ‘The Garden of Ireland’ - County Wicklow, 90 years ago.
She told me that she came to London on the 2nd January 1958 and has lived in the City of London ever since.
She got a job working in the Kensington Cigarette Factory in nearby Old Street (since demolished). She said it was a good job even though she hated the smell of cigarettes.
I asked her what’s been the best thing about living in England and Lily replied, “The NHS because it’s always been there for us.”

Gerry

Gerry is from Meath to the north of Dublin. When he was 15, his dad, who was a farmer, had a heart attack and died at 55.

At 17, Gerry came to England and immediately started working on the construction of the M25 motorway that surrounds London. He'd told the contractor that he was 20 instead of 17 as the pay was better for older men back then.

He did 'shuttering', constructing the wooden moulds that concrete is poured into to create motorway sidings and bridges.

The scale of the work was huge, and the shutters came on special lorries. The structures were held in place with cranes and were up to 100 feet tall and 4 feet wide, with steelwork already made up inside.

They'd put a scaffold board across, and a man would balance on this board to guide the tonnes of concrete as it was pumped into the void.

Gerry remembers that once, a man slipped and fell in. He was lucky because he got caught on a ledge, and the concrete only went up to his waist. If that hadn't happened, he might still be in that retaining wall today.

The work was exhausting, but there was 'serious money' on the job. Gerry still knows people in the business and knows that those doing the same work today aren't paid much more than he was in the 70s. The difference is that there was no health and safety back then, so you ‘worked five times harder’.

Nowadays, builders clock in and out of a site using iris recognition software. Back then, you had to push your card into a clocking-in machine. If you didn't want to work, you'd pour half a bag of sugar into the machine. This would put it out of action, so the bosses couldn't tell when the men were working.

He worked on the construction of the UCL in Russel Square, a vast concrete Modernist building. "There was an Irish fella, Little Patsy from Mayo. Believe me, five Bob (25p) was a lot of money in those days. If you gave him that, he'd clock you in from 6 am to 10 pm. So you could finish at lunchtime and then go off on another private job."

Gerry lived on the Holloway Road, "There were thousands of us from every county in Ireland. I lived in a house with a lovely Irish family."

Gerry used to enjoy the dance halls. He said it was a great time. "We all had a lot of money, and we met a lot of Irish girls."

Every Sunday night, he'd go with his mates to the Gresham dancehall. Then at 2am, they'd go to Noreen's cafe, which was open all night. They'd get 'a feed' and then drink until 6 am before going straight to work.

Gerry did a big demolition job near Gatwick airport. They had huge roll-on skips to dispose of all the waste. The English skip-man asked Gerry, "Can you pull a fiddle for me? Can you do 20 skips a week?" The job only needed 3 skips, so they rested all the rubbish on the top of the skips to make them look full and managed to get through the agreed 20.

Gerry had 16 'live' and 27 'dead men' on the job. A dead man is a non-existent worker who is on the books, and it was Gerry who was getting their pay. "I was paid my men top wages, and in the pub after work, I'd pay for them and their girlfriends' drinks. I treated them well, and they worked hard because of it. We worked like mad but the money, the money. Will you leave me alone, the money."

Another firm said they could do the job for half the price, and Gerry lost the contract. After a month, the bosses begged Gerry to return because the new people were too slow.

Gerry has lived in London for 55 years. He has no complaints about the English and said he was always happiest working for them. "When you do a job for the English, the money is never an issue. All they care about is that the job is done right."

Gerry visits Ireland often but would never go back there to live because it's too expensive. "There's no life there anyway - not like in London."

Gerry has been married and divorced twice but is still friends with both of his exes.

He lives on his own but has a girlfriend who comes over from Ireland to visit occasionally. Soon, she will stay with him permanently because Gerry will need some looking after. He is about to start treatment for bone cancer. He'll need injections into his spine and some powerful medication. Gerry is taking it all in his stride. "With the type of cancer I have, I could live for a year, or I could live for twenty. There's no point in panicking - I'm just going to get on with it."

Nellie

Nellie is originally from County Mayo. When she was young there was no work in Ireland, so at 21, she moved to York.
She got a job at the Terrys' Chocolate factory. She worked on the factory floor making Terry's Chocolate Oranges and Terry's All Gold. I asked her if she ever ate the sweets, and she said no, you wouldn't want to if you saw them being made.
The factory has long since gone. Nellie only worked there for a couple of years anyway because she got married. Her husband Laurence was also from Ireland, and they had 7 children together.
She said that the people of York have always been very friendly and that she's never looked back. She’s kept her Irish accent and has made sure that her family still have strong ties with Ireland.
One of their sons, Gerry, became a successful businessman and used to fly light aircraft. He was an experienced pilot who often flew to mainland Europe on business trips.
In 1999, Gerry asked his dad to accompany him on one of those trips. Unfortunately, the plane developed an engine fault and crashed into a field. Along with two other passengers, Gerry and Laurence were killed.
Nellie told me that there isn't a single day that she doesn't think about her husband and son. She said to lose her husband is bad enough, but to lose a son 'is just wrong’ but that ‘You just have to live through it though.’
She said the accident has pulled the rest of her family together and they are all really close. Her remaining 6 kids are always looking out for her. 'They watch me like a hawk,' she told me.
Nellie is 88 now and still lives independently. She was heading off for lunch when I took this shot. I asked if she was meeting friends, and she replied, “Not today, but I'm sure I will find someone to talk to." She added, "I don't usually tell people my life story, you know," as she walked off.

Dolan

Dolan is from Galway in Ireland. He came to London in 1969 to work as a builder.
His bike is a Triumph folder. He bought it new over 50 years ago and like Dolan, it’s still going strong.

JO

I met Jo at a bus stop in Balham. She has a bad back and was getting the bus even though she only lives two stops away. She'd been out shopping and told me that she's been all over trying to get some Heinz beans. She'd tried the big Tescos in Streatham and the one on Balham Hill, but they were out of stock. Apparently, she informed me, it's to do with the delivery drivers having to self-isolate due to Covid.
Jo is from Cork in Ireland but has lived in Clapham Junction and then Balham for years. She loves the area, but it's changed a lot, 'It used to be a lot more mixed and more working-class.'
She remembers her local, The Grove in Oldridge Road, being full of West-Indians, Irish, and Asians. She said it was great being in such a loud and raucous pub. Even the police would drink in there after finishing their shift. The Grove is a gastropub now.
I asked her if she had any problems being from Ireland and living on the mainland. She said that during the troubles, she worked in the local betting office. 'In those days, if you were Irish, you'd have to keep your mouth shut because some people would react badly to hearing an Irish accent.'
She never had any trouble with the police though. In fact, if her husband had a few too many drinks and was a bit wobbly on his feet after closing time, the police would pick him up and bring him home. She said with a chuckle that more often than not, they'd then lock up their Panda car (police car) and all come into the house and start up a drinking session in Jo's kitchen - Things really have changed a lot in Balham.

sean

Sean McMullen is originally from County Down in Northern Ireland.
He was born in 1935 and first came to Britain as a young man. ‘When I first went through immigration into England I told them that my name was Sean, but they wouldn’t accept it and put me down as John’ - the bastards!
Before he retired, he worked as a bus conductor, ‘Of course you don’t get bus conductors any more’ Sean said, ‘I was a historic breed walking up and down the bus with my little ticket machine strapped to me belly’.

Sean was having a sit down on a wall in Camberwell High Road when I took this shot. He’d just come back from seeing a Matthew Bourne adaptation of Romeo and Juliet at the Sadlers Wells Theatre. He said he enjoyed the show but it was quite a strange production of Shakespeare as it was set in a mental hospital, which Sean said with a chuckle ‘was a bit mental’. ‘I like to get out and about’ Sean told me ‘but I do get a bit tired at my age.’
Sean is single. He told me in his still strong Irish accent that he was once married to a woman from Yorkshire but they separated, ‘She was a real Northern Lass - I couldn’t understand a bloody word she said.’

BETTY

Betty is 84, she came to England from Dublin when she was just 19-years old. Unlike many who had to leave Ireland for England to earn money, Betty came because she really wanted to.
Her mum gave birth to Betty very late - she was 45. She was a strict woman with very old-fashioned views (She must have been born in the 1890s). Betty told me that she came to England to get some freedom.
In England, Betty worked on the buses for a bit. She told me that she wore a little ticket machine on her belt and had to turn the handle to print a ticket.
She had several other jobs until she got married to an Irishman and went back to Ireland to live with him as a farmer's wife.
She had four kids, but once they were grown, the marriage ended, and Betty came back to England.
She loves living in South London. She has a Tesco Metro nearby and can get the bus to Brixton if she needs to go to M&S. She enjoys the independence of living alone.
She has a 'posh friend' who is a barrister who often takes Betty to all the trendy new restaurants in central London. Betty loves this, "It's a different world for posh people," she told me.
When the weather is okay, Betty makes a habit of getting out of her flat. She'll come to sit on the bench on the Kennington Road to watch the world go by.
She has a daughter and a son that live close by and has grandchildren and great-grandchildren too.
She knows that many Irish people that came to Britain were poorly treated and experienced a lot of racism. But Betty wanted me to know that in the whole time she's been in England, nobody has ever uttered a racist word against her. She said to me, 'you always hear the bad side, but it's not always the way; there's always a good side.'
As we parted, I gave her my card and said that I would send her a print if she gets in touch. She took one look at my contact details and said that she'd email me. Unlike her mother, Betty is clearly a modern woman.

JIM

Jim was born in Piltown, Kilkenny. He was one of nine children. His dad was a labourer who worked on the Bessborough Estate, and they lived in a workers' cottage that came with the job.

Jim hated school and left at 14. Apart from a bit of cash-in-hand fruit-picking, there was no work around the village.

Eventually, he got work for 'Iverk Produce.' At the time, they were local farmers but have since become one of Ireland's largest fruit and vegetable suppliers. Jim got paid £20 per week. He didn't mind the work and preferred it to hanging around the village doing nothing.

He came to London on holiday and stayed with his sister and her husband in Clapham, SW London.

Jim loved London. '"I was a country boy in a big city and couldn't get enough of it." He decided to stay, but the city took a bit of getting used to. A friend asked to meet him for a drink across the river in Fulham. Jim got there okay but got utterly lost trying to get home on the Tube.

He first worked for the Inner London Educational Authority cleaning school buses before getting work on the building sites. It was hard work, but the money was good.

"The bosses were animals and would work you to the bone. There was no hi-vis or health and safety. If it was raining or snowing, you just put on a hat and got on with it. It was exhausting, and you knew you'd done a day's work when you were finished because you were absolutely drained."

The builder would pick the men up from a street corner in Wimbledon and drive them to the site. At the end of the day, the men were dropped off at a nearby pub owned by the same builder to get paid. Over the course of the night, a lot of the men would end up handing their wages back over to the bar.

Jim then got his own flat. Rent was so cheap in those days, so he had plenty of money left to enjoy himself. He'd go to the Swann in Stockwell, which is still an Irish Pub today.

He'd prefer to get the bus home after a skinful because if he took the Tube, he'd fall asleep. It was only 2 stops home, but he'd often wake up at the end of the line and then have to take the train back. On one occasion, he fell asleep again and woke up at the other end of the line. He then had to wait five hours in the cold for the first train.

Every week he'd send money back to his parents. Eventually, all his 9 siblings lived in England, and they were also sending money back. Jim joked that his parents were probably better off during this time than he was.

Jim then moved to Balham in SW London. Late one night, while walking home from the pub a little worse for wear, he noticed a launderette with its door wide open. He went inside to see if there was anything worth taking. There was nothing, but as he turned to leave, a police car pulled up outside. Jim grabbed a broom and started sweeping the floor until the police drove off.

Jim then worked as a bus conductor on the 2B Bus from West Norwood to Finchley. This was much lighter work than labouring. Jim's last job was as a van driver for the Post Office until he retired at 65.

Jim couldn't afford to go back to live in Ireland. He wouldn't want to anyway. The last time he was there, he didn't know a soul apart from his immediate family, and he barely recognised the place. He confessed that he couldn't wait to get back to London.

"I'm just an ordinary person, and I've had a pretty ordinary life. I've made mistakes along the way, but I can't complain. I've had a good life. I'd probably do it all exactly the same again."

Mary

Mary was born in Tallowbridge, County Waterford, in 1931. Her dad's 150-acre farm had cattle, sheep and pigs. It also had the ruins of a fifteenth-century castle on the grounds.

As a child, Mary remembers clambering up the spiral stone staircase of the castle tower and enjoying the view. It was a beautiful spot, and although farm life was hard, Mary loved the place. Mary used to milk the cows before going to school, where she was "a bit good and a bit naughty" and left at 14.

She did lots of different jobs in Ireland. In Mary's words, "I had a rag in many bushes".

When she first came to England, Mary worked as a nurse at the German Hospital in Dalston. The job came with accommodation, although some of the matrons were "Pretty tricky". Mary got on fine. She was homesick at first but quickly adapted to London life.

She then worked at the North Middlesex Hospital, and around this time, she met Patrick.

Patrick worked on "The buildings", mainly for Taylor Woodrow. He was from Iniskeen but had moved to England and lived in Balham in South London. A friend introduced the couple, and Mary immediately liked Patrick because she could tell he was "An honest man."

They married St Ignatius Catholic Church in Stamford Hill and bought a house together in Tottenham. The couple had a long and happy marriage until Patrick passed away in 2005.

Mary still misses Patrick terribly, "He's long gone now, but what can you do? God called him to eternity, and that was that."

She's been back to Ireland a few times over the years. In her 70s, she even visited the castle on her farm but wasn't up to climbing the spiral staircase she once ran up as a child. The place was still as beautiful as she remembered it.

Mary now lives in a care home in Stamford Hill. She likes the place because "The staff are so kind to the old people." Mary enjoys the Bingo sessions and loves the 'Sing-a-longs' but admitted, "I'm afraid that our voices are failing." She also attends the regular lunch club at the Irish Elderly Advice Network in nearby Hackney.

Mary is 94 now and, recently, has started to have vivid dreams about her childhood. She dreams of paddling in the stream that runs through the farm. She dreams of running through the fields and, of course, the castle. The dreams are "splendid", but even though she’s live in England for over 60 years, they make her terribly homesick.

MIKE

Mike is originally from Donegal in Ireland. He’s lived in London for nearly seventy years. From the age of 15, Mike was a miner. He did stone mining up in Scotland using drilling and explosives but a lot of his mining work took place in London. He helped dig the Victoria Line Tube and the Northern Line extension. London soil is clay and although there were tunnelling machines that did some of the work, a lot of the tunnels were dug by hand by a small crew of men, who like Mike were mainly from Ireland.
Mike said he loved the work - he loved getting up early (he still gets up at 6 am every day) and he loved working with his gang of fellow miners. I asked him if all that heavy labour in a confined space has given him any problems in later life. He said ‘Nope, it did me good.’

PHYLISS

Phyllis McMahon has lived in Soho since 1963 when she came from Ireland to become an actor. I asked her if Soho has changed a lot over the 57 years. She said ‘not really, there’s still people selling stuff that they shouldn’t be selling and there’s still people buying stuff that they shouldn’t be buying’ she smiled and said ‘Soho won’t change because people won’t change’

kevin

Kevin was born in 1956 in Dublin.

He was one of eight kids. The family lived in a small three-bedroom house. He and his four brothers shared a room. It was cramped, but Kevin joked that at least they were never cold.

Kevin had a 'terrific time' growing up. He didn't like school much but loved sports: football, hurling, and soccer.

He left school at 16 and started work as a decorator. 

In 1976, when he was about to turn twenty, Kevin came to England with a couple of pals "just for a laugh." 

He ended up in South Ruislip, a suburb west of London and hated the place; it was quiet and had "no craic whatsoever." But then, through his work decorating, he met a man from Antrim living in the South London district of Tooting, and Kevin moved into the area. 

Many Irish people lived in Tooting then, and there were lots of dance halls and pubs, and Central London was just a few stops away on the tube (Underground). Kevin started enjoying himself. 

He then got a job painting the 'ABC Cinemas' (Associated British Cinemas), a chain of nearly 400 cinemas spread all over Britain (the brand no longer exists). Kevin and his mate travelled all over to decorate them and had 'some great times' in the various towns and cities they visited.

Kevin is the first to admit that he has a bit of wanderlust. He and another mate, Mick from Tipperary, cycled over 4,500 miles around Europe for four months on a shoestring. Mick was good with the money, and Kevin was good at maps. They were a great team and had a brilliant time. 

Two years later, Kevin travelled through North Africa and the Middle East. He then got an around-the-world flight and saw "too many countries to name." His favourites were Sri Lanka and the old Yugoslavia, which he thought was incredible. The beer was cheap, too. 

Kevin has always been a decorator. "It's the only thing I know how to do." But now that he's getting older, he's regressing a bit because his eyes are "banjaxed." He added, "I never 'cut in' (a decorator's term for doing the edges) on a Monday - especially if I've had a big weekend."

He decorated the pub where I took this shot. It's a bustling Irish pub famous for its huge portions of Irish food, such as bacon and cabbage, Irish Stew, roast dinners, and Guinness. 

Kevin can't stand Guinness and always drinks Fosters, but only out of a Heineken glass because it's narrower. He is sure that this improves the taste. The Germans, who know their beer, are also very fussy about the type of glass their beer is served, so maybe Kevin has a point.

In the pub, there's a display of Irish football jerseys mounted in frames; Kevin has given all the frames three coats of green paint, apart from the one containing the Dublin shirt, which has four.

Kevin married a girl from Leicester who was a barmaid when he met her. He thought she "was gorgeous," Kevin joked that it must have been his accent that she liked because it couldn't possibly be his looks. The couple have since divorced.

He has three kids. His eldest is a solicitor. His nieces are doctors and surgeons. His youngest is a data analyst. She lives with her mum. When asked if he and his ex were still friends, he replied, "My ex wouldn't talk to me in a seance."

Kevin's eldest daughter has a partner from Donegal; his son's partner is from Tipperary. His youngest daughter has promised 'to get herself a Dublin fella'. He knows she's only joking and told me he doesn't care who her kids end up with as long as they are happy.

His family back in Ireland calls him 'English Kev. ' His sister Gay, who recently passed away, always introduced Kevin as 'my brother from England'—he would always correct her, "No, Gay, this is your brother from Ireland who lives in England."

Since moving to England, his mum has always called him 'Sterlo' because she loves it when he gives her the British currency, Sterling. She takes it across the border into Northern Ireland on shopping trips in Jonesborough.

Kevin wouldn't go back to living in Ireland - his kids live nearby, and he joked that even though they are adults, they still need their dad around. He is currently decorating his daughter's house.

He feels so lucky regarding his kids.  "They are great and have done so well - I was a stepping stone for them to start better lives in England."

He may have come over for just a laugh, but 48 years later, it looks like he came over to stay. 

Breda

Breda is originally from Cork but has lived in Balham in SW London for 37 years. Her husband Patrick passed away from prostate cancer in January, and life hasn't been the same for Breda and their dog Daisy since.
Patrick was a 'Sligo man' (A town on the North West coast of Ireland). He was a welder by trade, and the pair were married for most of their lives.
Breda misses Patrick terribly, and so does Daisy, who would always sit on the sofa between them when they watched TV.

Breda says that Daisy has been a great companion during this difficult time, and she gives her a reason to leave the flat. Breda told me that they don't walk anywhere in particular - Daisy decides the route. Breda does have to keep an eye out for chewing gum, because if Daisy sees any, she will eat it.

Patrick's death is still very raw for Breda. Her niece has invited her to spend Christmas with her family, but Breda said she would rather stay at home with Daisy. "I don't want to spoil their day,” she told me. "I know that things will get better, but at the moment, I can't imagine spending Xmas away from our flat."
Before he died, Patrick said to make sure that Breda always takes Daisy when she visits his grave. "He needn't have worried," Breda told me, "When I get to the cemetery, Daisy already knows the way."

MAEVE

When Maeve was 16, her mum died of cancer. This was in Dublin in 1956.

Her dad was so distraught that he couldn't work. In those days, you left school at 14, so Maeve and her brother supported the family. Maeve worked in a shop and earned just £1 2’6 a week (£1.12). There was no benefit system then. 'We had nothing.' Maeve told me and is not ashamed to admit that the nuns would sometimes bring provisions to the house. Her dad returned to work, but after a couple of hours, he'd come home because he was so overcome with grief. ‘He just couldn't cope.' Maeve was afraid he'd get the sack, but eventually, the family 'got back onto its feet.'

When her brother Eddy was 16, he left a note on his bed saying that he had left for England. Maeve's dad ran to the docks at Dún Laoghaire to stop him. But it was too late; the ship had gone. The following week the family got a ten-shilling note in the post with a letter saying, 'love from Eddy, I'm okay.' He'd got work on 'the buildings' and promised to send money regularly. It was a lot of money in Dublin back then (50p today)

Work was so scarce in Ireland that the rest of the family eventually moved to England to start a better life.

Maeve had a friend in London and stayed with her parents in Highbury. She got a job at the Pye Radio Factory in Holloway testing car stereos. She didn't enjoy the work sitting in a hot room wearing headphones and tuning up the radios before they were boxed up, especially with the supervisor nagging all day. He had a cockney accent which Maeve didn't like as she was used to the more softly spoken Irish.

There was a party at work, and her supervisor was there. They got friendly, and Maeve realised he was actually a nice guy. She's no clue why she suddenly changed her view of him, but they started dating all the same - his name was Alex. Maeve also worked in the evenings as an usher at The Gaumont Cinema in Holloway (now the Odeon). Alex would meet her at work just as the film was ending. He joked, 'One day, I'll come here earlier and watch a whole film - I must've seen the end of every movie.'

The pair married in 1963 and had two sons. By then, Alex was working as a postman. They had a good life together.

In those days, the Post Office retired you 60, and Alex would spend a lot of time working on his car. Whenever the couple went out, Maeve would have to wait for him to polish the car and check the oil before leaving. One Friday evening, they sat at the table chatting about cars when Alex had a stroke. It put him into a coma from which he never recovered. Maeve was 44, and Alex was 61

Maeve is 83 now and never bothered finding anyone else, "I would be looking for the same things that I had with my husband in a different man -  I cannot replace him. It's how I am. I have many friends and family, so I never feel lonely."

One of the reasons that Maeve has so many friends is that since 1977, she has volunteered at The London Irish Centre in Camden. She goes 3 days a week. She helps with the lunches, the garden and chats with visitors. She's been volunteering for 45 years now which is quite an achievement. In fact, this was recognised recently when Maeve was awarded the Freedom of the City of London at Mansion House by the Lord Mayor. Not bad for someone who started life working in a shop earning just over £1 a week.

I took this shot at a South London bus stop.

The woman was born in County Roscommon, Ireland. When she was small, her mum died of TB, and her aunt raised her. At 17, she came to England to find work.

That was 59 years ago, and not long after, she met her husband at a tea dance at ‘The Blarney’ in Tottenham Court Road. He was also from Ireland and worked on ‘The Buildings’. He passed away several years ago.

The woman told me she has a daughter and four grandkids and likes living in London. She enjoys going to mass every Sunday because afterwards, she gets to chat with the other Irish members of the congregation. There used to be loads, but now there are ‘only a few left standing’.

She then told me a joke:

A man entered the church and saw the priest eating a lovely fresh loaf of bread.

The man said, “Father, I’m so hungry, will you spare me some of that bread?”

The priest replied, “Son, are you so hungry that you’d eat stale bread?“

The man said, “Yes, Father, I would happily eat stale bread.”

The priest replied, “In that case, come back tomorrow.”

The woman said, “It’s good to joke. When you are sad, funny things make your mind feel better.”

Her bus came, and she was gone. We’d had a great chat, but I never did get her name.