textiles

textiles, as one of the most basic consumer goods, play a prominent part in the history of manufacturing industry. In Ireland records of commercial hand spinning and weaving of wool go back to the 8th century. An export trade in woollen cloth became established during the Middle Ages, and expanded rapidly in the 16th and 17th centuries until choked off by the Woollen Act of 1699. The industry nevertheless grew during the 18th century to supply an expanding home market. In the 1830s dumping from steam‐powered English concerns undermined Irish production, although the manufacture of specialized varieties, notably tweed, continued. Silk manufacture was established in the 1690s by Huguenot immigrants in Dublin. Poplin, a composition of wool and silk, was manufactured in the ‘liberties’ area of the capital, but largely perished in the 20th century due to competition from synthetic textiles. Cotton spinning, in steam‐ and water‐powered mills, grew rapidly in the late 18th century, but declined from the 1820s. Instead it was linen, already a major household manufacture in the 18th century and successfully mechanized from the 1820s, that became Ireland's most enduring industrial success story.

Shirt making, centred in Derry city, Cos. Donegal and Tyrone, and Belfast, took off after 1850, with the introduction of automated sewing and cutting machines. It declined after the Second World War, due largely to foreign competition. Man‐made fibre manufacture was introduced in Northern Ireland shortly after the war, to replace the declining linen industry. Prominent British firms, like ICI at Larne and Courtaulds at Carrickfergus, were joined by the Dutch‐owned British Enkalon at Antrim and the American DuPont at Derry. Due to global pressures and domestic political conflict the synthetic textile industry declined in the 1980s and only DuPont now remains.

Bibliography

Ó Gráda, Cormac , Ireland: A New Economic History 1780–1939 (1995)

Peter Collins