Edinburgh's First Hibernian: Author Presentation

A talk by author Mike Hennessy on Canon Hannan's contribution to Edinburgh's Old Town was delivered on Tuesday 2nd December in the former St Mary’s Street Hall.

There's more to Canon Hannan's mission in Edinburgh's Old Town than the founding of Hibernian FC. It could be said that 150 years later Hibs is Hannan's most enduring legacy - it certainly has the highest profile in this the club's anniversary year - but that would be to ignore his wider contribution to his adopted city from 1861 to 1891.

Hannan's story is nothing short of remarkable. A young priest from post-Famine Ireland, fresh from All Hallows seminary in Dublin, is called to service by Bishop Gillis in Edinburgh to minister to the poor in the medieval quarter known as Little Ireland.

Over the course of 30 years he becomes one of the most influential figures in a city dominated by its Protestant elite.Against a background of anti-Irish and anti-Catholic feeling, Edward Hannan worked tirelessly to improve the physical and moral state of his parishioners who were living in the most appalling slum conditions, tenements chronically overcrowded with little sanitation. They were mostly poor first-and second-generation Irish who had escaped the Great Famine of the 1840s.

Hannan chose education, exercise and temperance to improve his parishioners’ lot and to that end he opened a branch of the Catholic Young Men's Society (CYMS) in 1865 and moved it into the premises on St Mary's Street in 1870.

In these very same premises, Mike Hennessy spoke eloquently to a packed audience about Hannan's mission and the physical imprint of his work that remains to this day.

Here is link to the full presentation:

https://tinyurl.com/y7773mrp