{"id":216482,"date":"2025-12-29T15:36:16","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T15:36:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/216482\/"},"modified":"2025-12-29T15:36:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T15:36:16","slug":"famous-singer-has-kilkenny-roots-grandfather-loved-singing-the-rose-of-mooncoin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/216482\/","title":{"rendered":"Famous singer has Kilkenny roots &#8211; grandfather loved singing The Rose of Mooncoin"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Robbie Williams has always been very proud of his Irish heritage and in particular his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kilkennypeople.ie\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Kilkenny<\/a> born grandfather, Jack Farrell.<\/p>\n<p>Exhaustive research has revealed that it was Robbie&#8217;s great-great grandfather that was Irish and that his maternal grand-dad, Big Jack Farrell was actually born in Stoke-On-Trent but considered himself a Cat and often sang, The Rose of Mooncoin at family occasions and in the pub run by Robbie&#8217;s parents, called the Red Lion in Burslem.<\/p>\n<p>The Farrells, originally from John&#8217;s Green in the centre of the city were similar to a lot of hard working Irish immigrants who left post-Famine Ireland for the Collieries and Iron Works in the Tunstall area of &#8220;The Potteries&#8221; in Stoke-On-Trent.<\/p>\n<p>READ NEXT:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.kilkennypeople.ie\/news\/local-news\/1797046\/television-star-stops-by-kilkenny-shop-to-sample-their-award-winning-99s.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Television star stops by Kilkenny shop to sample their award-winning 99s!<\/a><\/p>\n<p>John Farrell 1845 &#8211; 1872 was born in John&#8217;s Green and he and his wife Sarah moved to Stoke and Robbie&#8217;s great grandfather, John Farrell was born at Goldenhill, Stoke.<\/p>\n<p>Robbie&#8217;s great grandfather, Martin Farrell fought in the Boer War and World War I and died in December 1942 while his son \u201cBig Jack\u201d was fighting with the 4th Battalion North Staffordshire Regiment in World War II.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier, in the 1930s, he had followed his father into the pits during the coal mining boom. Jack would become Robbie William&#8217;s Grandfather to whom Robbie was very attached.<\/p>\n<p>In an interview from 2014, Robbie William said of his grandfather: &#8220;My grandfather, Jack Farrell \u2013 Jack the Giant Killer \u2013 was a huge man, built like an Irish navvy, fought in the Second World War, lived on a council estate. He was the first real male figure in my life \u2013 he was an honest man, he taught me to box, I was surrounded by women and he worried that I was going to be a sissy.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kilkennypeople.ie\/section\/115\/news\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">FOR MORE LOCAL NEWS, CLICK HERE<\/a><\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Robbie Williams has always been very proud of his Irish heritage and in particular his Kilkenny born grandfather,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216483,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,60,12969,112452],"class_list":["post-216482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-kilkenny","tag-mooncoin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}