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Two Views of Migration Wednesday, 14 March 2018 Two poems By Martha Ashwell As part of the Manchester Irish Festival 2017, I wrote this original work for our event, ‘Echoes of Ireland’. Voices from our past echo down to us through the years, inspiring us...

The Death of Helena Blunden

Wednesday, 8 March 2017 The Death of Helena Blunden: Short Story By Martha Ashwell In my previous post for this blog, I wrote about the life of Helena Blunden. Helena was a Belfast mill girl (Millie) who was a talented singer but who sadly met an untimely death at a...

The Story of Helena Blunden

Manchester Irish Writers Friday, 3 February 2017 Working in the Linen Mills of Belfast: the life of Helena Blunden By Martha Ashwell The Old Gilford Linen Mill: P Flannagan/[CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons In the mid 19th and early 20th centuries, linen was the...

Tom’s Story

Irish Soldier of the Somme By Martha Ashwell My childhood school friend was Claire Dignan (a derivative of Duignan), third generation Irish and living in Manchester.  This is the story of her father’s experience as a British soldier fighting in the First World War....