news – Page 5 – Simon Chadwick

Harp Society House, Cromac Street, Belfast

The Irish Harp Society in Belfast was based at a few different addresses from the beginning of the first Harp School in 1808 until the finish of the second Harp School in 1840. I have references to the Harp Society House being in three different Belfast streets at different dates: Pottinger’s Entry, Cromac Street, and Talbot Street.

This post is to collate as many references as I can, to try and work out where the house in Cromac Street was.

Mr. Rennie

We have a few references to a harper called Rennie in the 1840s. He is obviously a different person from the famous Valentine Rennie who died in 1837.

I don’t know anything about Mr. Rennie apart from these newspaper reports of him performing in the South-East with Mr. O’Connor. I am putting him here so that we can keep an eye on him, and so that we can add any new information that turns up.

Valentine Rennie

Valentine Rennie was a traditional Irish harper and tradition-bearer in the first half of the 19th century. He taught the harp in Belfast for fifteen years, passing on the inherited tradition to perhaps twenty or more young harpers in the next generation. We have loads of information about him including two different portraits (header image courtesy of National Museums NI)

In this post I am going to try and cover everything so it will be very long. We will start by going through his life in order, and then after that we will look at things like his harps and his portaits.

William Gorman

William Gorman was a traditional Irish harper at the beginning of the 19th century. He learned the harp from Arthur O’Neil, at the Belfast harp school, but he was expelled before he had completed his eduction. This post is to try and say something useful about him.

Hamilton Gillespie

Hamilton Gillespie was a traditional Irish harper in the first half of the 19th century. This post draws together information about his life.

Jane McArthur

There are quite a few traditional Irish harpers in the first half of the 19th century, whose names appear in the lists of harp students, but who disappear from the record after they finish their education and become professional harpers. However I think I still want to do a post about each of them. That way we have a place to add any further references that we might find. And it also helps us to start to get to know them as individuals.

Tom Hardy

Tom Hardy was a traditional Irish harper in Belfast in the second half of the 19th century. We don’t have a lot of information about him; we have only a few scattered sources. This means that any attempt to tell his life story will have more speculation and guesswork than hard facts. But I think there is enough to try. We can always come back later to add new information or to correct wrong guesses.

John MacLoughlin

John MacLoughlin was a traditional Irish harper in the first half of the 19th century. He had an interesting working life in Dublin, playing before the King, working in taverns and ending up in poverty. This post is to gather together the different scattered references to him, to build a picture of his life and work.

Patrick O’Neil

Patrick O’Neil was a young traditional Irish harper at the beginning of the 19th century. We have very little information about him, but I am putting him here on his own post so that we can start to think about who he was, and so that we can add more information as and when it turns up.

James MacMonagal

One of the problems with trying to trace these harpers in the 19th century records, is when there are multiple variant spellings of names. Sometimes it becomes unclear if we are dealing with two different people or not. This is a big problem if we are trying to reconstruct the life story of an individual.

Sometimes there is direct evidence that helps us to divide one name into two people (e.g. concerts by Mr. Rennie after the death of Valentine Rennie). Other times the record-keeping helps us to be sure that two names belong to one person (Hamilton Graham / Hamilton Gillespie in the Harp Society minutes, 1820-21). But often we just have to guess based on circumstantial evidence or hints.

We have references to James MacMonagal, and also to James McMolaghan. I really don’t know if they are two different people, or two different versions of the same name. This post is to draw together the references we have so far, and then to be a place where further references can be added in the future.