Homesick: the Irish in asylums in the North of England

Summary

Following development of a nineteenth century asylum complex in the North of England, a clay pipe bowl and stem fragment were discovered. The bowl was incised with the words ‘Dublin’, and may have related to a local pipe maker who catered for the demand of an increasing market of emigrant Irish. Its presence indicates the conscious cultivation of an Irish-abroad identity within the larger growing population of the North of England.

This paper will look at the issue of ‘homesickness’, juxtaposing the landscape of the urban industrial north with the ‘home’ landscape of the rural Irish emigrant, and determining the extent to which their identity was shaped by displacement. The proliferation of asylum building across the north of the country will be considered, not as a direct result, but a related by-product of mass emigration.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• In the City: archaeology and the personal experience of urban transition   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2013

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 405