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Death of an ‘old boy from Ireland' in a London-Irish suburb
It began with a handwritten shop notice. A passerby photographed it in early June in the window of Butler's newsagents in Archway, north
London
. Over the decades the area had been a magnet for Irish immigrants, but the community aged. Younger London Irish now favour Hackney or Clapham. Meanwhile, Archway's green army went grey.
The notice announced the death and upcoming funeral of Martin Fallon (73), originally from Sligo. It had a grainy passport-style photo of him. The passerby, a local, posted the picture she captured on X with a note about how Archway's 'old boys from Ireland' were 'slowly dying out'. She said the area had changed from its Irish heyday, with many pubs and betting shops closed.
There was a wistful air to her post, embellished by her image of the note in the window. In neat capitals, it looked like the vintage handwriting typical of an older person. The passerby's tweet garnered two retweets and 18 likes. Then somebody took a screenshot of it and posted it on a slew of Irish Facebook groups.
This second person seemed to misconstrue the shop notice as an appeal to find Fallon's family. Soon it was all over Facebook groups linked to London's Irish communities, as well as groups linked to communities in the west of Ireland. A narrative – inaccurate, as it turned out – took hold that Fallon must have lost touch with home.
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The story fitted a stereotype: that of the older Irish man who moved to London years ago, perhaps 'to work on the buildings', and ended up alone. Facebook users shared the post widely in a well-intentioned but misguided attempt to find anyone who knew Fallon.
There were even radio appeals in his native Sligo. But important elements of the narrative that sprang up around Fallon online did not survive scrutiny. In fact, he had been in touch with a few family members, in Ireland and in London. They knew he had died because they had arranged his funeral.
Fallon's funeral took place in Islington Cemetery on June 9th, the week after the tale about him went viral. The Irish Times attended the service in the small crematorium chapel, flooded with light beneath a glass dome. The huge cemetery around it was the size of a city park. Irish surnames abounded on its headstones.
The notice in Butlers newsagents window announcing Martin Fallon's funeral
Flowers left for Martin Fallon outside his funeral in Islington Crematorium
Although some elements of Fallon's story online were perceived inaccurately, he had indeed lived a life typical of some Irish men who moved to Archway decades ago. He was a regular in Butler's newsagents, which has continued to sell all the Irish regional newspapers. He never married. He appeared to have a tight-knit network of friends and some helped him when he fell ill. He died of lung cancer.
Originally from Collooney, he once worked in a bakery in Sligo. He loved Liverpool FC and Sligo Rovers. He had three sisters, at least two of whom had moved to the Archway area before him. Fallon followed about 40 years ago. It seemed two of his sisters had died. The remaining sister now lived in Galway but wasn't able to travel to his funeral. Fallon had a niece, who was present. She said she would bring his ashes to Ireland.
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Irish in London: 'Nobody was making me stay. I could have left at any time and gone home to Sligo ... That was 24 years ago'
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Fallon's service was simple, dignified but still noticeably small by Irish norms. There were a dozen mourners, a fraction of the size of a typical funeral in the sort of west of Ireland community where Fallon grew up. It hadn't been correct that he had completely lost touch with all family, but clearly his network in London was tight.
Charlie Patel outside his newsagents, Butler's, a hub of the old Irish community in Archway
Irish local newspapers in the shop
Charlie Patel, the owner of Butler's News, where the original funeral notice was posted, describes Fallon as a 'lovely man'. He always bought the Sligo Champion and occasionally some of the Irish food staples the shop also stocked. Fruitfield jams, Chef sauce, Erin soups, Flahavan's porridge and Clonakilty rashers are all sold in Butler's.
'Even when my old Irish customers move away from Archway to the suburbs, to Enfield and places like that, they come back to my shop to buy their local Irish papers,' says Patel. 'Or sometimes their grown-up children come in to buy it for them instead.'
Over several hours in Patel's shop over a couple of days last weekend, other elderly Irish immigrants talk about the Archway they have known as a bastion of the London-Irish community, and what it is like now.
Many are, like Fallon, bachelors who retired after working in manual jobs. They are friendly but some are also shy about being photographed or identified. A west of Ireland woman, younger than Fallon's peers, says many of Archway's older Irish contingent, especially the men, 'wouldn't be too forthcoming'.
'Especially if they ended up alone,' she says.
The woman says putting up a shop window notice of the kind that sparked the viral online post about Fallon is common in Archway. It is, she says, a sort of community messaging service for the elderly Irish to spread funeral details and news of deaths. 'They wouldn't always have each other's phone numbers,' she says.
Archway is at the northern end of Islington borough, which is more affluent towards its southern parts nearer central London. The local MP is former Labour leader – now Independent –
Jeremy Corbyn
. In 1983 he beat Clare man Michael O'Halloran, a former MP who had split from Labour.
The heartland of Archway centres on Junction Road and its strip of shops; the Upper Holloway Road, which used to be lined with Irish pubs, and a pedestrian plaza beside Archway tube station, known as Navigator Square, named in honour of Irish 'navvies' who came to Britain in the 19th century to build transport networks.
'There is an older Irish community here who often talk about going back [to Ireland],' Corbyn told The Irish Times in
an interview
on Navigator Square during last year's election. 'But they're never going back. It's just the idea of it that's important to them.'
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Older Irish people in London: 'It is so important to have something to get people out of the house. It breaks down the loneliness'
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Corbyn said The Archway Tavern, still standing tall over Navigator Square (which used to be a roundabout), was a hub of the Irish community and was 'where building labourers got work'. He said many Irish women worked as nurses at nearby Whittington Hospital. One history book estimated that 85 per cent of its nurses were Irish in postwar years.
'Every pub on Holloway Road also used to be an Irish pub with Irish music,' Corbyn said. 'That's not quite the same now. A lot has changed in Archway, just as it has in Ireland.'
One thing that has stayed the same, however, is Butler's newsagents. Patel, who runs the Junction Road shop with his Gujarat-born wife, Naimesha, says they bought it 26 years ago. It was owned before that for 15 years by another Indian family. Another Indian family previously owned it for 18 years, after taking it over from Butlers, an Irish family.
So for almost six decades since the mid-1960s, the newsagents shop has been run by Indians who kept its Irish name.
Among the customers last Friday is Tipperary man Michael Coley (81). He has been in London for 67 years, since he was barely a teenager, but he still has a strong Irish accent. Coley used to work 'doing paving and sewage pipes'. With his late wife they had five children, who gave them 14 grandchildren.
Coley used to go home to Thurles 'every few years' but no longer. On Saturday he is back in Butler's shop to buy Mikado biscuits and Fig Rolls for his grandchildren.
A woman originally from a pretty village in Co Clare has been in London for 50 years. Would she ever think of moving back to Ireland?
'You get too used to the life over here,' she says. 'They're too nosy where I'm from anyway. They want to know everything but tell you nothing.'
Betty Breen enters. She came to London 43 years ago. She has a glint in her eye. 'Where are you from?' she asks this reporter. Wicklow, comes the reply. 'We all have our problems in life,' she says.
Breen married a Clare man, and her sister used to run the Archway Tavern, 'years ago, back when pubs were pubs'. Her London-born daughter moved to Kilkenny 15 years ago. Archway has changed a lot, she says. 'I think it's gone a bit rough.'
Two men, bachelors, come in separately but chat together. Neither wants to be identified. One is from the southwest and moved to Archway in the 1970s. He worked in a trade. He didn't marry. 'I had a friendship years ago but it never worked out.'
The other man is from a southern county. He used to travel between Ireland and England, and sometimes Scotland, 'when things were harder for the Irish in London'. One reason he stayed in Britain was the National Health Service.
Joe Henry, from Tubbercurry in Sligo, moved to Archway in the 1970s. Like several of the others, he never married. He is friendly and chatty, but prefers not to divulge any more personal details.
'I've lived my life under the radar so far,' he says, laughing.
Several of the men give lowdowns on the pubs on Holloway Road favoured by the Irish. Some drink in the Flóirín, an unfussy, locals kind of pub that used to be called the Mulberry. When The Irish Times visits, a Laois versus Tipperary hurling match is on the television. It is also clearly an Arsenal pub; the club's stadium is not far away.
The woman behind the Flóirín bar looks familiar. It is Kerry woman Betty Breen, from Butler's earlier. She laughs when asked to stand for a photograph. After declining, she swaps banter with men at the bar. She is well able for them.
The Flóirín
The Crown
Some men drink in the Crown on Upper Holloway. The Hercules, farther down the street, was also popular. The Mother Red Cap on Holloway Road, a former mainstay of the community once owned by the Phelan family, shut last year after St Patrick's Day. The legendary Gresham ballroom shut years ago and is now a Sainsbury's.
Through the other side of Navigator Square, up Highgate Hill, a new Irish music and gastropub, Brendan the Navigator, was opened a couple of years ago by Clare flute player John Rynne. The Old Crown Inn, which was an Irish mainstay, used to sit on the same site. It was across the road from St Joseph's Catholic Church, jokingly known by some local Irish as the 'posh' church. The other church is St Gabriel's on Holloway.
A grotto at St Joseph's church on Highgate Hill near Archway
Many of the elderly Irish in Archway speak of how the area has changed. People from other ethnic backgrounds are now more numerous. Census data appears to bear out the perception.
A 2021 council report based on census figures suggested 5.8 per cent of the Junction electoral ward's residents were of 'white Irish' ethnicity. About 11.5 per cent were black and 8 per cent Asian. About 4.1 per cent were born in the Republic, with 5.5 per cent born in Africa and 7.1 per cent born in the Middle East and Asia. A further 4.3 per cent were born in the Americas and Caribbean.
Archway, it seems, is no longer an Irish stronghold.
Other recent incidents have unsettled some of the older Irish community. John Mackey (87), originally from Callan in Co Kilkenny, a bachelor who lived for decades in nearby Finsbury Park,
died in a knife attack
in May. A man has been charged with his murder.
Mackey had recently moved a little farther east to Manor House. He used to frequent Archway, however, where his late brother Christy used to live.
Mackey's niece, Margaret Kennedy, said her uncle was 'an enigma', a popular, colourful character who wore a fedora and was 'loved by everybody who met him'.
'He was simply a charming man. He never married but he was a ladies man, always a woman on his elbow. I never once saw him cross.'
Echoing something Corbyn had said earlier, Kennedy said her late uncle John always joked that he would 'be on that boat' back to Ireland, but he never moved home.
Mackey's funeral is in Callan next week.
Meanwhile, Fallon's funeral earlier this month concluded with the Liverpool football anthem, You'll Never Walk Alone. Sligo Rovers Football Club also sent flowers.
Fallon died on April 27th, the day Liverpool beat Tottenham 5-1 to win the Premier League. He slipped away just before kickoff.
