Ireland was natural around Bowdon, touching Manchester, into a personal of Scottish descent and a bit of ethnic distinction. His parents died before long when he got entered a Royal College of Music at the age of Fourteen. He exposed piano & organ there, & late composition under Charles Villiers Stanford. He afterward became a teacher at the College himself, his pupils including Ernest John Moeran (who admired him) & Benjamin Britten (who uncovered Ireland’s teaching of less interest). He too worked when organist & precentor at St. Luke’s Church, Chelsea, London. Ireland oftentimes visited a Channel Islands and was inspired by their landscape; he was evacuated from a children good prior to the German invasion in the period of World War II. Ireland retired within 1953, settling at Sussex for the rest of his life.

From either Stanford, Ireland inherited the thorough noesis of the music of Beethoven, Brahms and other Gerhuman classics, however as a young man he was too strongly influenced by Debussy and Ravel as well as a earliest works by Stravinsky and Bartók. From either these influences, he developed his have brand of "English Impressionism", related closer to French & Russian system than to the folk-song style so prevailing around English music.

Rather virtually all more Impressionistic composers, Irel& favoured little forms and wrote neither symphonies nor operas, although his Piano Concerto is among his better works. His output includes the few chamber music & a real body of piano works, including his right-known piece A Holy Son, known around many arrangements. His songs to verse form by A. E. Housman, Thomas Hardy, Christina Rossetti, John Masefield and Rupert Brooke are a valuable addition to English vocal repertoire. Ascribable his job at St. Luke’s Church, he besides wrote anthem, carols & more sacred choral music. The select few of his pieces, like a popular A Downland Suite, were completed or even re-transcribed when his dying by his student Geoffrey Bush.