Belfast Archives - Simon Chadwick

Abraham Wilkinson

Abraham Wilkinson was a traditional Irish harper in the first half of the 19th century. This post is to gather the few references we have to him, so we can start to build a picture of his life.

W. J. Winnington was learning to play the traditional wire-strung Irish harp under Valentine Rennie, but he died when he was still a student, in 1833. I don’t think there is much more that we can say about him at this stage. But this post is to remember him, that he was one of our boys.

Hugh Dornan

Hugh Dornan was a traditional Irish harper in the early to mid 19th century. I thought at first that we knew almost nothing about him, and that this would be a very short post, but as I have started to line up the evidence it seems we may have quite a lot of information.

James O’Neil

James O’Neil was a traditional Irish harper in the early 19th century. We have only two sources which mention him. But we can join these two and try to find the context for them, to start to tell his story.

Samuel Patrick

Samuel Patrick was said to be a “bad harper” and arsonist. He had a long career working as a traditional Irish harper in Belfast and Dublin, including performing for Queen Victoria’s son, Prince Arthur. This post draws together what I know about him so far.

William Carr

William Carr was a traditional Irish harper at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century. This post is to gather everything I can find out about him.

Patrick Murney

Patrick Murney was a blind traditional Irish harper living in Belfast in the 19th century. We have portraits of him and we have traditionary information from him. This post gathers together what I have found so far about him.

(Header image courtesy of National Museums NI)

Roger Begley

Roger Begley was a blind traditional Irish harper from Belfast. He married a Dublin girl and they went to live in England.

I had not heard of Roger Begley until a few years ago. His name doesn’t appear in any of the books or articles about the Irish harp tradition. This post summarises what I have found from digging in the archives, to try and give us a picture of his life.

Patrick McCloskey

Patrick McCloskey (or McClusky) was a blind Irish harper who died very young.

Hugh Frazer

Hugh Fraser (or Frazer) is an Irish harper whose name appears quite often, because he taught the harp in Drogheda in the 1840s. This post is to draw together other references to him, to try and build more of a picture of him and his life.