My name is Chris Naylor. I’m not from Ireland - but Ireland is from me. My roots are in County Mayo, in the west of Ireland, where generations of my family lived and died and left their traces in parish records, census ledgers, and the quiet earth of rural churchyards. I grew up in England, far from all of that. But the pull never went away.

Chris Naylor

This blog is where I follow that pull. The Ireland Within is a personal record of my journey into Irish ancestry - the people I’ve found, the places I’ve never been but somehow recognise, and the strange, tender experience of piecing together a family story from fragments. It’s about what it means to carry an identity across distance and generations, and to slowly, carefully, make it your own.

I’ve found ancestors in the 1926 census. I’ve stood (in my imagination, at least) beside a gravestone in Charlestown. I’ve written poems trying to say what the facts alone can’t hold.

If you’re Irish by blood, by heritage, or simply by longing - you might find something here that feels familiar.