The history of the Irish community in Glasgow’s south side is being kept alive by a group established by a community activist and social justice organisation.
Govanhill Baths Community Trust
Govanhill Baths Community Trust was developed following a grassroots ‘Save Our Pool’ campaign against the Council’s decision to close the pool in 2001.
The Baths are being refurbished while services continue across nearby venues, when reopened the Trust’s purpose is to regenerate the area and meet the needs of the local community.
When the pool opened during the First World War as a municipal swimming baths and wash house, Govanhill was home to many migrants including Highland and Lowland Scots, Irish, Italians and Jews from Eastern Europe. Today, it is Scotland’s most ethnically diverse neighbourhood.
Irish History Group
The Govanhill Baths Archive was set up to catalogue the history of the Baths and the area, with a focus on celebrating its history of migration. The Irish History Group meets on the third Thursday of every month in the Deep End, an arts space developed by the Baths.
It is a project dedicated to preserving the history of the Irish community in Glasgow, which was largely concentrated around the Gorbals and Govanhill and predominantly originated from the North West of Ireland.
Fiadh McLysaght, group facilitator, explains its evolution: “In 2022, Paula Larkin, the archivist at Govanhill Baths set up the group. Mainly they were doing oral history interviews, speaking of people’s history and heritage, like people from the Gorbals or Govanhill with connections to Ireland. Out of that came the book Little Donegal, The Irish in the Gorbals and Govanhill, edited by Colm Bryce.”
After a pause, the group was re-established last summer as they received funding from the Irish Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs Emigrant Support Programme. On 16 May this year they hosted their first ever conference, the Irish Culture and Heritage Conference at St Francis Community Centre in the Gorbals.
Caption: ‘Women of Donegal’ by Irish History Group member and visual artist Christina McBride plays to a background of traditional Irish music from Frank McArdle & Group at the first Irish Culture & Heritage Conference in St Francis Community Centre on 16 May 2025.
Challenging myths around migration
Colm Bryce died in April this year. From Derry, he describes in the book’s preface how he knew that his granny was born in the Gorbals, but after moving to Govanhill in 2020 he began the process of tracing his family’s movement between Gweedore in County Donegal and Glasgow.
The book describes the “constant connection and movement back and forth” of many Irish to and from Scotland in the 19th and 20th century. Although nowadays the Irish community has assimilated into the city, throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Irish people were described in racist terms that are still used against migrants, asylum seekers and refugees today.
The author challenges myths about migration by showing the contribution the Irish made in Glasgow. Bryce wrote that this is in the spirit of the Govanhill International Festival and Carnival, organised by Govanhill Baths, which returns to Glasgow for its eighth year on 1st August 2025. The festival is described as a celebration of creativity, solidarity and a show of anti-racist unity against division and scapegoating of migrants.
Bryce wrote: “Migration is often talked about as if it is something new and modern-some terrible problem that has to be fixed, by harsh government legislation-rather than being the very bedrock of human society since its beginnings.”
New generations of Irish migrants
McLysaght describes the Irish History Group’s ability to foster connections between different generations of Irish migrants: “There’s primarily older people who’ve been in Scotland for generations like maybe two, three, four generations, maybe more. And then there are also quite a lot of people who have just come over here like four or five years ago, like me and Rachael.”
Rachael Kelly Ryder is an artist and member of the group who also moved to Glasgow from Ireland in recent years. Her work focuses on Irish migration and she is completing a PhD at Glasgow School of Art with the National Library of Scotland’s Moving Image Archive.
McLysaght explains that many of her and Kelly Ryder’s generation are leaving Ireland due to the housing crisis, which is among the most severe in Europe. The group, she says, “engenders lots of nice discussions and connections, about Irishness and being in Glasgow” between newer arrivals and older generations.
Additionally, there are opportunities to learn and practice Irish language skills at Conradh na Gaeilge Glaschú, the first branch of the Gaelic League established outside Ireland, in Govanhill in 1895. Classes are still going strong, also funded by the Irish Government’s Emigrant Support Programme. McLysaght says that even those without Irish roots attend: “I have a couple of friends who aren’t Irish, that all have no connections, but go to the Irish language class.”
Rachael and Fiadh say there has been a wave of Irish people settling in the south side of Glasgow in the past five years, from Ireland and London, drawn by the relatively cheaper cost of living. While they both have noticed Glasgow becoming more expensive, it is nothing compared to Dublin, which is notoriously unaffordable. Rachael explains: “You’re still able to live so much more freely here when compared to in Dublin. I mean, if you go to Dublin for one weekend your money’s gone for a month.”
Many critics of Ireland’s economic policies blame the housing crisis for driving its young people overseas, as the number of those from younger generations leaving Ireland increases. Rachael is one of these statistics: “I don’t see any future where I’ll be able to buy a house there.”
Lessons from the Irish in Glasgow
The extent of the impact that these new migration patterns will have on contemporary Glasgow remains to be seen, but as the city’s migrant population continues to expand in the 21st century, important lessons can be learned from the Irish History Group on the vital contribution that migrants have made and continue to make to the city, despite being targets of hostility on arrival.
See below for a timeline of the history of movement between Ireland and Scotland, compiled from information gathered in the Little Donegal book written by Colm Bryce and published by the Govanhill Baths Archive & Heritage Team.
