YOU DON’T KNOW YOU’RE BORN

21 January, 2007 by The_Boss

ITV1 Tuesday 23rd January 2007 9:00pm to 10:00pm

Coronation Street star Anne Kirkbride swaps the cobbles of Weatherfield for the peace and quiet of the Irish countryside to explore her roots in a new living history series.

The three part series sees well known personalities delving into the history of their ancestors and rolling up their sleeves to do their ancestors’ jobs. Alan Davies and Ken Stott also take a trip down memory lane for the programme.

Anne travels to both Ireland and Weston-super-Mare to learn about her ancestors and the jobs they did for the first episode of this new three part series. And much closer to home she explores Oldham for her search into her family’s past. Anne also tries her hand at farming and photography.

Anne became Coronation Street’s Deidre at the age of 17 and has played the role for 35 years.

The actor is the fourth generation of her family to live in Oldham, Greater Manchester. Her mother died 14 years ago and her father Jack Kirkbride passed away in October last year aged 83.

She has always thought that Jack’s grandfathers, John Niland and Thomas Kirkbride, influenced his working life and wants to find out more about them.

John was a farmer in Ireland and Thomas worked as a portrait artist and lived in Weston-super- Mare but apart from these facts she knows very little about the two men.

Her first stop on the journey to research her family history is Weston-super-Mare where she meets historian Brian Austin.

She discovers that Thomas grew up in a rich family who were profiting from the boom in tourism at the time. But it seems this wealthy lifestyle wasn’t enough and he decided to pursue his dream of becoming an artist by moving to Ohio, America.

He worked there as a sketch artist drawing the homes of wealthy locals. But after five years he returned to the UK and moved to Oldham.

Anne’s search takes her back to Oldham to the Glodwick Estate where Thomas lived. He set up shop there as a portrait photographer taking photos of the local mill owners and their workers.

With the help of local historian Colin McInnes, Anne tries to find the exact area where Thomas’s studio would have been based. But it no longer exists. So to get even closer to what working life would have been like for him she recreates a Victorian family portrait using equipment from that era and she sets up shop in a nearby Victorian glass house.

A local family dress in their Sunday best and Anne has to snap away to create an image without any of the modern technology she is used to.

Anne says: “I knew the artistic thing was in the family, I knew it had come from there but you never consciously think about it and it has made me consciously aware that I am following in his footsteps.”

Thomas died in 1922 aged 72 and his death certificate lists him as a decorator suggesting he could no longer make a living from photography.

While Thomas made a living in the industrial north of England, Anne’s other great grandfather John Niland worked as a farm labourer in Ireland.

She travels to Galway to meet her cousin Kate Niland who tells her that John worked on a nearby country estate.

Records on the estate show that he was hired as a ploughman. Anne’s next task is to work the very land her great grandfather would have worked on 90 years previously using a traditional horse drawn plough.

Anne had always thought her great grandfather farmed his own land rather than working as a hired help so she delves into his history further by travelling to his home town of Gort.

It transpires that having lived through Ireland’s bloodiest chapter in which the IRA waged a guerrilla war fighting for independence, followed by a brutal civil war, John benefited unexpectedly and gained 30 acres of land.

Anne finds the plot of land where the farm would have stood and visits the farmhouse where she is shown around by the current owner Anne Donohue.

It is a poignant moment for Anne as she is shown around the house where her great grandfather lived.

“This is my ancestral home where John lived and raised his family. Molly, my grandma, grew up here. She then moved to England and married Arthur, Thomas the photographer’s son. Together they had a son who was my dad, Jack. So to imagine Molly running around here as a small girl is very emotional,” she says.

It’s no longer a working farm so Anne travels elsewhere to experience what working life was like on a rural farm in Ireland. She meets farmer Tom Hennigan who practices traditional methods to work the land and care for his animals. In fact he farms the same way John would have done 80 years ago.

Anne’s tasks include feeding the animals and cutting peat for the fire.

Her day ends with a mug of tea and a chat around the peat fire.

Tom is impressed by Anne’s hard work and tells her: “I want you to realise you’re home. You’re back to your roots. The real roots. You’re back home and I want you to feel it.”

An overjoyed Anne replies: “That’s wonderful. You’ll have me in tears again.”

John’s life had been hard but successful. Aged 70 he left his farm and moved to live with his daughters in the north of England. Just two years later he died in Oldham.