The Castlebar Hat Factory Chimney Tower (Brick from same)

"I know what you aree thinking ..its just a brick! However this brick links the menacing rise of Nazi Germany to quite literally the social fabric of Irish society in the late 1930's. A trade mission headed by Senator JE McElinn and included Marcus Witztum and Serge Phillipson negotiated the setting up of the Castlebar hat factory with Hugo Reiniger & Co, hat manufacturer of Chomotow. The brick was one of many in the towering chimney of the Castlebar Hat Factory. The chimney stack (sadly demolished in 1997) was approx 100m high and this alone took eight weeks to build. The bricks for the chimney came from Belgium. They were specially made to close in so all you had to do was go around in circles putting the bricks on top of each-other. Originally the factory would be double its present size, but the start of World War Two meant that building materials were scarce and very expensive. The architect who designed the building was a Belgian called Auguste Koettgen who worked alongside an engineer called Martin Pirnay also a Belgian. The design of the Hat Factory was itself unique in that it was the first time in Ireland that a factory was built to metric measurements. The construction of the factory attracted to Castlebar 64 French-speaking Jews from Czechoslovakia, while a number of young men and women from Castlebar were sent to Belgium for training in the use of machines and the manufacture of hats. The factory was initially run under the careful eye of its General Manager, Mr.Franz Schmolka, who was then in his late forties and a native of Prague. I hope this is of interest to your national treasure campaign. Kind regards, Michael "