The Reed Celtic Cross: One thousand years of Ireland's history in Abney Park Cemetery

Entering Abney Park Cemetery from Stoke Newington Church Street, one of the most striking memorials you see is a massive, intricately carved, and now Grade II-listed, Celtic Cross. Created in Kilkenny by the Irish monumental sculptor Edward O’Shea, it memorialises two sons of Hackney’s first MP Sir Charles Reed. But this Celtic Cross is much more than just an example of the funerary art popularised by the late nineteenth-century Celtic Revival. O’Shea’s creation and Hackney’s Reed family combine to tell us a story of Ireland from the ninth to the nineteenth century, taking in the Plantation of Ulster, the first New Testament printed in old Irish script (Cló Gaelach), Dissenting Protestant missions to Ireland, and more.

Breda Corish is a Hackney-based Irish historian who researches the long history of Ireland in London. irishlondonhistory@gmail.com