History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

In May 2008, the Irish researcher Breandán Ó Corráin, was in Hampstead Cemetery Fortune Green Road, looking for a grave. He found row number J8 and worked his way along the line checking the numbers on the back of the stones to the position of grave number 35, but there was nothing visible. Having travelled so far, he decided to dig and eventually found a small headstone covered with six inches of soil. It said:  ‘In Loving Memory of Darrell Figgis, died October 25th 1925. Not gone from memory or from love, but to our Father’s home above’. This was the grave he was looking for which had remained hidden for over 80 years and Breandán wrote a letter to the Irish Times about his discovery.   Figgis grave stone This is a very tragic story with three interlinked deaths between 1924 and 1925. Darrell Figgis was at the heart of the fight with Britain to establish the Irish Free State, but divisions within the movement and his early death made him a forgotten man.  He was born at...