A tiny piece of Ireland's Industrial Heritage from the 1930's

"This sample swatch of leathers connects me to the model town of Portlaw in Co Waterford.The factory & town was set up by the Malcolmson family to employ & house their cotton workers circa 1840, the factory was a steel framed structure said to be the largest single span building in the world at that time and turned over 2M of raw cotton and processed 6M yds of calico. After the American war of independance when protectionist tactics were introduced the Irish cotton industry declined and the factory and mill closed. Subsequently the Portlaw Spinning Co. took over the mill but the company had a short life span survive closing in 1904. My families involvement with Portlaw started when my grandfather Kennedy O'Brien set up Irish Leathers in 1920 taking over the factory buildings in Portlaw in 1932 and employing several hundred employees at the height of the tanning industry until the introdution of plastics into shoe making which heralded the downfall of the leather industry in Ireland and the company closed in 1980. My father also called Kennedy O'Brien continued in the leather business diversiving into manufacturing sports shoes and made the running spikes that Ronnie Delaney wore for his 1956 Olympic Medal in Melbourne. I found it facinating as a child to visit Portlaw and the other tanneries my grandfather and his children had an involvement in and spent many hours in the North Fredrick St. factory in Dublin seeing the cutting and forming of leather into shoes instilling in me a 'can do' attitude and incouraging my interest in business, and of course my love of interesting leather shoes. This piece of leather from the Irish Tanneries swatch housed in the Portlaw Heritage Centre and who kindly gave me a piece when I visited last Nov 2016, reminds me that my life is made up of lots of happy childhood family memories around leather."