The History and Heritage Podcast

Emerald Roots: The Irish Legacy in Argentina Think you know the Irish diaspora? Think again. Argentina is home to the largest Irish-descended community outside the English-speaking world. From Tomas and Juan Farrell in 1536 to World Cup winner Alexis Mac Allister, this episode uncovers the untold stories of Irish settlers, military heroes, rebellious flag-raisers, and cultural icons who shaped Arg...

Irish history did not stay in Ireland. This episode sets the direction for The History & Heritage Podcast in 2026 — not through announcements, but through intent. The year ahead explores Irish lives under pressure, at home and abroad. From Irish shepherds on the Argentine pampas, to songs that carried memory when language faded, to the often-unacknowledged Irish influence on British public lif...

Irish surnames weren’t chosen. They were inherited long before birth — and they told the world exactly where you stood. Long before much of Europe had fixed family names, Ireland was already encoding kinship, obligation, protection, and memory into language itself. This episode looks at how Irish surnames actually worked, why they appeared so early, and how conquest and bureaucracy broke their gra...

This episode of The History and Heritage Podcast examines the Irish surname Leahy, along with variants such as Lahey and Leahey. Although often treated as a single family name, Leahy derives from two distinct Gaelic lineages with different meanings, social roles, and regional histories. The episode explores how anglicisation, regional pronunciation, and administrative record-keeping caused separat...

“Certavi et vici — I have fought and I have conquered.” Few family mottos carry as much lived experience as the Flanagan line. From the medieval chiefs of Roscommon to Olympic champions, artists, priests, soldiers, and reformers, the Flanagans have spent centuries turning struggle into purpose. This episode explores • the origins of the Flanagan name, • the meaning of the motto Certavi et vici, •...

Surname Series: O’Dwyer (Ó Dubhuir) From the rugged slopes of Kilnamanagh to the courts of Europe, the battlefields of the 17th century, and the sporting arenas of today, the O’Dwyer story is one of resilience, identity, and reinvention. This episode explores their ancient Laigin roots, the stronghold they built in Tipperary, their resistance against Norman and Tudor pressure, the dramatic capture...

In this episode of The History and Heritage Podcast, we turn to one of Ireland’s most compelling medieval saints: St Malachy of Armagh (1094–1148) — reformer, peace-weaver, and one of the key figures who helped shape the Irish Church at a turning point in our island’s story. From his childhood in Armagh to his tireless work restoring discipline, rebuilding churches, and healing political rivalries...

Saint Jarlath of Tuam rarely makes the headlines of Irish history — yet without him, the spiritual map of Ireland would look very different. A monk trained by the disciples of Patrick. A teacher who shaped Brendan the Navigator. A founder who built where a wheel broke — and changed a landscape forever. Tuam did not begin as a town. It began as a sign. In this episode, we uncover the story of a sai...

The twelfth century was a time of upheaval — kings at war, monasteries in reform, and a young Ireland caught between worlds. From this storm rose one man: Lorcán Ua Tuathail — Saint Laurence O’Toole. A prince taken hostage. A monk who fed the hungry with the gold from his own altars. A bishop who stood between Norman swords and his people — and stopped a massacre by the sheer power of faith. This...

Before Patrick, before Armagh or Clonmacnoise, there was Ailbe of Emly — Ireland’s forgotten first bishop. Legend says he was cast out as a child and suckled by a she-wolf in the forests of Tipperary. But when he grew, he sought wisdom beyond the sea — trained in Wales, ordained in Rome, and returned to the Irish plains to kindle a light that would never go out. From Emly, the earliest centre of C...

From the Gaelic “Ó Maoilriain” of medieval Tipperary to the emigrant Ryans who crossed oceans with little more than their faith and their name, this episode traces one of Ireland’s most enduring surnames. Through true stories of ordinary men and women — a famine-era schoolmaster, a soldier far from home, a nurse in 1918 — we explore what it means to carry a name through centuries of change. Featur...

Join Liam Blake of the History and Heritage Podcast on a journey through one of Ireland’s most storied surnames — Blake — where faith, conquest, and endurance intertwine. From the martyred monk Bláthmac on Iona’s altar to the Norman knight Richard Caddell, “le Blak,” who forged a lineage of Galway merchants, bishops, and exiles, this episode traces a thousand years of courage and conviction. Disco...

The Murphy Surname — a concise, source-driven exploration of Ireland’s most common name. In this episode we trace Ó Murchadha/Mac Murchaidh from its early medieval roots in Leinster and the Uí Cheinnselaig, through Dermot MacMurrough and the Norman era, the penal and famine centuries, the 1798 rebellions, and the global diaspora that carried Murphy to the Americas, Australia and beyond. Along the...

From the coral shores of the Pacific to the red dust of Queensland, this episode traces two places linked by memory — the Irish habit of naming new worlds after home. We begin on New Ireland in Papua New Guinea — once called Latangai, later Nova Hibernia and Neumecklenburg. Beneath each name lies a story of power, endurance, and 30,000 years of unbroken tradition. Then to Tyrconnell in Queensland...

From the banks of the Shannon to the streets of Syracuse, two places carry Irish names that tell stories of power, pride, and defiance. In Athlone, we trace the word from its origins in Ireland — a fortress town divided by the River Shannon and scarred by siege — through the lofty halls of Kensington Palace, where Alexander Cambridge styled himself Earl of Athlone, and on to the Cape Flats of Sout...

Out on the Connemara coast, this “pig-marsh between two seas” has seen it all: Cromwellian land seizures, famine, emigration, crumbling piers, half-built roads, and the stubborn survival of the Irish language. Along the way, it caught the eye of a French novelist, inspired one of the great mapmakers of the west, and in 2005 had its dignity restored when the Irish form, Muiceanach idir Dhá Sháile,...

“People cling to their ancient names.” When John O’Donovan wrote those words in 1837, he had just walked the roads of Longford, listening to locals insist that their town was not just Edgeworthstown, the name imposed by a planter family, but Mostrim — Meathas Troim — the fertile ridge, the frontier of the elder tree. In this episode of The History and Heritage Podcast, Liam Blake explores the long...

One name, two very different stories. In County Cork, Charleville was born of Restoration politics — a plantation town tied to kings, conflict, and commerce, later reshaped by faith, fairs, and remarkable people whose voices echoed across the world. In County Offaly, Charleville Castle rose as a Gothic masterpiece — the dream of an ambitious heir, scarred by fire, neglect, and tragedy, yet revived...

He was hunted by the Gestapo, with a bounty on his head. Yet Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty—an Irish priest from Killarney—saved over 6,500 Allied prisoners, Jews, and civilians in Nazi-occupied Rome. Known as the “Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican,” O’Flaherty built a vast escape network under the eyes of the Gestapo, using disguises, safe houses, and sheer courage to defy fascism. This episode of the...

From the hunting fields of County Limerick to the tidal shores of Connemara, two rare survivors of Ireland’s past take centre stage. In the final episode of the Native Breeds series, I explore the history and heritage of the Kerry Beagle — a deep-chested scent hound with roots in Celtic hunting traditions — and the Cladoir Sheep, a small coastal breed once thought extinct but rediscovered grazing...

Native Breed Series – The Irish Honeybee “If the bee disappeared off the face of the Earth, man would only have four years left to live.” Ireland’s dark honeybee, Apis mellifera mellifera, has been part of this island’s story for 5,000 years: shaping laws, folklore, farming, and faith — before disease, imports, and neglect nearly erased it. This week, Liam Blake tells its story: from Neolithic set...

🐐 Native Breed Series – The Old Irish Goat “The goat was the poor man’s cow.” This week, we’re telling the story of Ireland’s only native goat — a five-thousand-year survivor that gave milk to the poor, parchment to monks, and placenames to our maps, before almost vanishing in the 20th century. Join me, Liam Blake, as I trace its journey from Neolithic farms to nineteenth-century goat droves, to...

The Galway Sheep: Ireland’s Last Native Breed Long before the Galway Sheep was entered into rare breed registries, it was a backbone of Connacht’s rural economy. Developed from local stock and English Leicesters under landlord supervision, the breed flourished in the 18th and 19th centuries — before near-extinction after the Famine. In this deeply researched episode of The History and Heritage Pod...

When we think of the great animals of Irish history, our minds might turn to the elegant Connemara pony, the noble Irish wolfhound, or perhaps even the mythic Cú Chulainn’s steed, Liath Macha — the famed grey horse of the Táin Bó Cúailnge, or The Cattle Raid of Cooley, one of the central epics of early Irish literature. But for over two centuries, no animal was more central to the everyday life of...

“The history of the horse is the history of human civilisation.” – Prof. James Serpell. For over 200 years, the Irish Cob was the quiet, tireless heart of rural Ireland. It pulled carts, carried families to Mass, and survived famine, poverty, and prejudice. This is the story of the horse that built Ireland from the ground up — and the people who kept its memory alive.