Today marks Day 6 of the Strokestown-Liverpool Walk by Liverpool Irish Festival and Artsgroupie. Conceived as part of their work on the Liverpool Irish Famine Trail, participants will be walking from the National Famine Museum in the midlands of Ireland to the port of Dublin. This is a recreation of an 1847 journey taken by 1,490 people who had been evicted from their lands on the Strokestown Estate in County Roscommon in Ireland. They were marched 165 km to Dublin to be put on cargo ships to Liverpool and thence to Canada. It is estimated over half those who made the journey died before they reached their destination.
You can follow along with the walkers, with photographs and words reflecting on each day of the Walk at the Liverpool Irish Festival website.
The route they are walking in Ireland is known as The National Famine Way. It is marked at regular intervals with commemorative bronze shoes. These were cast from a real pair of 19th century children’s shoes found on Strokestown Estate. The Festival’s Artistic Director and CEO, Emma Smith, will walk with History Research Group leader (and ten million hardbacks writer), John Maguire. They’ll be joined by Liverpool Great Hunger Commemoration Committee member (and local historian) Greg Quiery, members of the National Famine Way and Strokestown Estate teams and Ireland’s Ambassador to Canada, Eamonn McKee. The team will carry a pair of bronze commemorative shoes along the route to Dublin. They will then cross the Irish Sea to Liverpool, where the shoes will be taken to the Liverpool Irish Famine Memorial.
Once the shoes arrive in Liverpool, they will be walked from Clarence Dock — where 1.3 million Irish migrants arrived during An Gorta Mór (The Great Famine) — to the Irish Famine Memorial at St Luke’s Church. The shoes will remain in Liverpool as a poignant symbol of the shared history of Liverpool and Ireland, a history both devastating and enriching. Two further pairs of commemorative shoes will travel onward to Canada to be homed there. Later in the year, during the Liverpool Irish Famine Memorial in October, Ireland’s UK Ambassador, Martin Fraser, and Consul General, Sarah Mangan, will repeat the Clarence Dock to St Luke’s Church walk.
The Story Behind the Walk
In 1847 at the height of the Irish Famine, 1,490 men, women and children set out from Strokestown in County Roscommon, Ireland on a walk that would see half of them perish. Guided by their landlord’s agent they walked the gruelling 165 km to Dublin port and onwards to the UK and North America because it was cheaper for their landlord to assist their emigration than it was for him to keep them in the Roscommon poorhouse. 177 years on, Liverpool Irish Festival friends and custodians of Liverpool’s Irish Famine Trail will set off from Strokestown on 19 May 2024 to walk the route of the evictees – now marked by the National Famine Way.
Along the way they will carry a pair of bronze shoes, cast from an exact pair found at the Strokestown estate and now the symbol of the ‘Famine Way’. The shoes mark a reconnection between the Irish famine emigrants and the Liverpool Irish Famine Trail which curates and preserves sites and stories of the Liverpool Irish Famine migrants for future generations. The route will start in Strokestown, moving onward to Dublin Port, onto the ferry from Dublin to Holyhead, Holyhead to Birkenhead and from Seacombe (Birkenhead) by ferry to the Mersey Port. The walkers will then carry the shoes via Clarence Dock Gates, through which 1.3m Irish lives passed and by foot to the Liverpool Irish Famine Memorial at St Luke’s Church in Liverpool.
How can you help?
The team will be raising vital funds to support the ongoing work of the Liverpool Irish Festival in the conservation, digitisation and upgrading of the Liverpool Irish Famine Trail. They are passionate about maintaining this legacy and this history for future generations.
Funds raised on the walk will contribute towards:
• The commissioning of the bronze shoes being cast as tangible heritage reference of the Strokestown Famine group and their link to Liverpool. These shoes will find a permanent home in Liverpool just as the migrants who wore them did
• Maintaining the existing Trail and its heritage whilst exploring new relevant sites of interest. As custodians of the Trail, the group are doing all they can to reinstate it and to refresh the Memorial monument, which has served as a poignant marker for people since 1998
• Developing an app to enable visitors to Liverpool to explore and understand the importance and relevance of the Irish Famine story to the city and its communities.
If you can donate to this cause today, you would also be warmly invited to join the team on a re-run of the last part of the walk on 27 Oct 2024, ahead of an Irish Famine Memorial event planned as part of Liverpool Irish Festival 2024.
Any support of the Strokestown-Liverpool Walk, the Liverpool Irish Famine Trail and helping to honour Liverpool’s role in supporting the Irish Famine poor and the legacy of that support today will be gratefully received and provide encouragement to the walkers on their long journey!