The Irish Festival is being held at various venues in Liverpool during October. Sadly, one of the venues not in use is the former Irish Centre on Mount Pleasant. By Neil Sayer, Archdiocesan Archivist.

 

Because of its location down the hill from the Cathedral, many people think that the archdiocese owns the building. While that isn’t the case, events at the Irish Centre certainly featured quite often in the pages of the Pic from the 1960s to the 1990s.

 

The building was designed by Edmund Aikin as a meeting place for Liverpool’s mercantile elite. It was built in 1815-1816 as the Assembly Rooms for the Wellington Club and was used for over a century for balls, parties and other social occasions. Its facilities were therefore entirely appropriate for the needs of the city’s Irish community, who by the 1960s were looking for a venue for their social and cultural activities.

 

It was officially opened as the Irish Centre, appropriately enough, with a banquet on the Feast of St Brigid, 1 February 1965. The ballroom had been given a new floor and could accommodate 500 people for dancing. Despite its status as a Grade II* listed building, the rest of the interior had also been renovated and redecorated to provide a buffet room, bar, two lounges and a reception hall.

 

In its heyday, the Centre offered dancing and other entertainments on Saturdays and Sundays, with Irish showbands and comedians. Children’s dance classes were held, the Irish Pipe Band practised there and welcomed new members, lessons in traditional Irish musical instruments were given by members of the local branch of Comhaltas, and there was a youth club and Gaelic language classes. For those who liked their sport, the Centre provided a venue for a Golf Society, Gaelic Football Club and Finn Harps soccer team. In the 1980s, there was a flourishing Over-60s Club, whose members met for recreation, companionship and lunch. A gift shop sold a wide variety of Irish goods, including Waterford crystal, Belleek pottery, pewter, Irish linen and books. It even stocked Irish produce including white pudding, cheese and sausages.

 

Tom Walsh was the first manager of the club and chairman of the Irish Centre. He was still in post when interviewed for the Pic in March 1976. He seems to have had a fairly typical Liverpool-Irish upbringing in St Vincent de Paul parish. His father came from Galway and worked as a docker; his mother ran a corner shop. “During my childhood,” Tom recalled, “I only ever remember listening to Irish radio, and the only newspapers we took regularly were Irish ones. You could live in Liverpool while remaining in an almost totally Irish atmosphere, and many people did.” Tom himself was a member of the Gaelic League and the Gaelic Athletic Association: “If Irish people do not meet together then they cannot keep their cultural heritage”, he said. “If they are a strong community and retain their heritage they can then integrate fully with their host community.” During the 1950s, Tom remembered, “you could go to a céilí every night of the week.” They were usually organised by individual parishes, and although there were various Irish societies they had nowhere to call home. Tom credits Fr Michael O’Connor, subsequently Cathedral Administrator, with the suggestion that the Irish community “should acquire our own premises instead of having to keep hiring halls.” An organising committee was established, with Tom as its chairman: “The Wellington Rooms were up for sale at that time, so we put in a bid and were successful.” At its most successful the Irish Centre employed 35 staff in its restaurant, ballroom and gift shop.

 

Shortly after the Centre celebrated its silver jubilee in 1990, it ran into financial difficulties, perhaps not helped by a costly refurbishment completed in March 1992 that included the long Kennedy Bar. The venue limped on in various guises but finally closed in 1997, despite a campaign to rescue it: it has been empty and unused ever since. In 1999 the former St Michael’s Parish Centre in Everton became the new home of Liverpool’s Irish community. Many of the organisations that had been based in Mount Pleasant relocated there, and in 2017 the club was officially renamed as Liverpool’s Irish Centre. It continues to work to celebrate and promote Irish culture – music, language, dance, literature and sport – and provide opportunities for socialising and learning. The Liverpool Irish Festival will be launched there on 16 October.