HAD YOU wandered through parts of Coventry in the middle of the 19th century and asked where the Irish lived, you probably wouldn’t have needed directions. Their presence was everywhere — in the crowded terraces, in the workshops and weaving sheds, in the streets around St Patrick’s church, and in the endless noise and bustle of an industrial city expanding faster than anyone quite knew how to manage. By the 1850s and 1860s Coventry had become home to a substantial Irish community.