Malcolmsons of Portlaw

Malcolmsons of Portlaw, the most notable, if still mysterious, exception to the general tale of 19th‐century deindustrialization outside the northeast. David Malcolmson, a Quaker (see society of friends), originally from Lurgan, Co. Armagh, set up in business as a flour miller in Co. Tipperary before establishing a cotton spinning mill at Portlaw, Co. Waterford, in 1826. This survived the crisis that almost immediately afterwards gripped the rest of the Irish cotton industry, and reached its peak of productivity in the 1850s, when the firm employed 1,600 workers. The family also owned mills in Manchester and Belfast and the Neptune ironworks in Waterford, and had interests in steam shipping and other concerns. In 1876 the whole complex of business interests suffered a general collapse which, like the family's earlier success, has not yet been fully explained. The mill continued as the Portlaw Spinning Company, but at a much reduced level, and closed down in 1904.