Ardfinnan | Luxury Woollen Heritage

October 2026: Midlands Fibre Festival & This is Knit

Weaving began at Ardfinnan with the arrival of monasteries, with Ardfinnan Abbey opening up the riverbank for pasture, where sheep produced parchment for books and wool for clothes. The first Cistercian monks in southern Ireland at De Surio Abbey a few miles downstream, initiated the Irish wool industry from the 1140s.

Ardfinnan's monastic infrastructure was entrusted to the Knights Templar when King Henry II came here in 1171 and became possibly Ireland's oldest castle built by the Norman Crown in 1185, with the royal Ardfinnan Castle's watermill turned to milling cloth that was woven and spun from sheep on the monastic grounds as an early woollen mill and one of the first in Ireland.

John Mulcahy (1756-1854) was a gentlemen's clothier and revived a wool mill from the nearby ruins of Fermoy Abbey, a daughter house of De Surio Abbey, when Fermoy town was founded in 1791 by Scottish businessman John Anderson. Anderson built the first national mail service and Ireland's largest army barracks here, growing John Mulcahy a market for red-coated soldiers and travelling blankets for tourists and horses. Operating at Scotch House beside the sheep pens infront of the mills, Anderson acted as an agent as far as New York and Mulcahy was influenced by scottish cloth design, crafting some of the first "Irish tweeds".

Mulcahy worked with John Daly of Rossmore Mills (once the wool mill of the largest Templar preceptory in Ireland, upstream of Ardfinnan and supplied with Cistercian wool from the sacred Holycross Abbey) to famously exhibit Irish tweed and frieze for gentlemen's clothing and horse blankets, showcased internationally for the first time, at the Great Exhibition in London, 1851. The supplier of the local Irish wool used, Lord Cornelious O'Callaghan, was made the Queen's representative for County Tipperary immedately after the exhibition. Frieze was the traditional Irish cloth at the time, highlighted when Daniel O'Connell wore a rugged frieze coat to represent the Irish people at his first sitting at the British parliament in London.

Long forgotten: Mulcahy's Rossmore Mills became a creamery in 1891.

John Mulcahy's son married John Daly's eldest daughter and from there they were led by a vision in 1868. Ardfinnan had a strong tradition of wool spinning and weaving in the cottages surrounding the castle and the production of woollens as an early example of a vertically-integrated woollen mills on the old coach road, but had struggled after the devastation of the Great Famine. He saw how the Irish nation was once flourishing with the woollen industry under the monasteries, where Mulcahy's mills at Ardfinnan and Rossmore were the oldest known in Tipperary going back to an age when cloth exported from Waterford port famously reached the markets of 12th century Florence in Italy. By devoting himself to his labour of love with 12 employees and continuing the old-fashioned fulling methods used at Ardfinnan for hundreds of years, he was within a few years giving large employment to the skilled villagers and supported the shepherds from the banks of the river valley to the hills of the Comeragh, Galtee and Knockmealdown mountains.

The old wool tucking 'Mill House' and flour mill at Ardfinnan became Mulcahy's woollen mills. c.1869.

In days gone, the original mills on the bridge was patronised by the charitable Knights Templar and Knights Hospitaller who could banquet with fresh bread in the round tower above and don themselves in warm tabards and mantle cloaks. A task of the knights was to protect pilgrims and travellers, which they welcomed openly in their great hall, giving loafs of bread and safe lodgings.

The Knights Templar introduced woollen cloth fulling at the mill operating as a woollen mills in the 12th century it is said to impress the arrival of Prince John in 1185, explaining the continuous history of weaving traditions among the locals of Ardfinnan. One such local named William le Teynturer (William the Dyer) is recorded in the village in 1295. This was not the beginning of the woollen mill, for a monastic centre had been established here since the 6th century by Saint Finnan, to whom Ardfinnan is named after. In those days it was the mid-waypoint on St. Patrick's Cowpath - between St. Declan at Ardmore and St. Patrick at Cashel. It was here too that Saint Carthage took refuge and was granted the similar place of Lismore where he established his revered monastery and great centre of western learning. Indeed one of the oldest watermills in the world was uncovered downstream, also in the Suir Valley, at Killoteran, dating to the 4th century. The strategic crossing between Eastern and Southern Ireland being on the River Suir, it was one of the best trout and salmon fishing rivers in the British and Irish Kingdoms, naturally ideal for washing wool with its soft mountain water.

The Ardfinnan hills were still flocked with the sheep breeds cultivated by the knights of old for their finest fleece and the locals were ready to be employed in the woollen industry once again as it began to prove ever more profitable with industrialisation. His dream having come to fruition at Ardfinnan, John J. Mulcahy retired to the castle in 1921 but sadly his wife Mrs Mulcahy had just passed away, followed by his first son Frank and then himself the following year. His grandsons were sent to Yorkshire to study textiles and return to lead the legacy. Having begun selling blankets of the finest fleece in the land, growing to supply tailoring houses in New York, London and Paris by the 1920s, it matured into the only woollen mills in Ireland completing all stages of woollen manufacture, from fleece to tailored suits in the 1940s. A "measure of the now famous Ardfinnan tweeds", reads an advertisement in 1920, can be bought for £6, 10s (€380 today). It had in fact been 'famous' ever since it's unmissable precence under Ardfinnan Castle at Ardfinnan bridge on the busy old-coach road.

The hydropower from the mills electrified the village in an age of candlelight, providing lighting to its worker's new cottages and street lamps. An agricultural co-operative was set up for local farmers, followed by a Cycling and Athletics Club, handball club, tennis courts, GAA club, brass band and theatre.

Mrs Mulcahy's family ran the first Glanworth & Dripsey Woollen Mills.

Ardfinnan tweed was the most fashionable choice for suits in the region, with a long and illustrious patron list. The suits and overcoats of Éamon de Valera, which he wore as President of the Council of the League of Nations, were also proudly made of Ardfinnan cloth. Perhaps most uniquely, King Edward VII, had his warmest motoring coat made out of the unique waterproof Galtee Cloth patented and woven at Ardfinnan. The King visited the mills en-route to his stay at Lismore Castle, indeed the sister castle of Ardfinnan Castle. He was hosted firstly at Shanbally Castle, the largest house ever built by Sir John Nash, where Edward VII was introduced to the pedigree sheep who's wool was used in the Ardfinnan Woollen Mills and woven into the fine tweeds and cloths worn and adorning Shanbally Castle and estate. The drive through the Vee with it's rhodendroms in bloom was a beatiful sight to behold but not before seeing the tweeds produced in the colours of the landscape at the Ardfinnan Woollen Mills. At Lismore he was again introduced to Ardfinnan tweed and from therein his love of Irish tweed was truly solidifed. The royal patronage also crystalised Ardfinnan tweed as a fashion statement of the nobility who wore it to express their love of the rural Irish life they adopted. Of these socialites, Edward Sackville-West was probably the closest at upstream Clogheen, himself the only potential buyer of Shanbally Castle and it's pedigree sheep that supplied Ardfinnan before it was demolished along with its entire in-house library recording its entire history. Motoring pioneer R.J. Mecredy, first Director of Dunlop Tyres (company that made the first pneumatic tyre), also wore a Galtee Cloth motoring coat.

In 1922 Ireland was declared a Republic and became the Irish Free State, with the mills of Ardfinnan becoming a Free State Woollen Mills, given the great task of making fabric for the new Irish army and an expanding civil service. While de Valera may have been a patron ever since having taught to the same school as the Mulcahy's of Ardfinnan attended at Rockwell College, the state was patron to the mill into it's latest years and so too was the Irish airline Aer Lingus for it's first ever uniforms.

Mulcahy, Redmond & Co. let it's employees go in 1973 after 104 years without a strike, due to a competitive disadvantage, largely arising from Ireland's admission to the European free market in association with the onslaught of synthetics. It's workers protested for the first time, blaming the government. Ardfinnan knitting wool, patterns and kits were exported abroad in the wake of the collapse of Irish woven textiles. Ardfinnan knitting wool gained renown as the yarn used in the Aran jumpers worn and popularised by Tipperary born American folk revival band The Clancy Brothers from down-stream Carrick-on-Suir. Evermore interesting was their unique connection to the first haute couture Aran, made by Cyril Cullen at Lismore Castle for guests that included the Kennedys. Ardfinnan Aran patterns were introduced during the boom for Aran sweaters in America by the Clancy brothers and Ardfinnan was the first to export Aran knitting kits abroad, with their own yarn and in-house pattern designs. This success took back the Aran market for the Irish when it had been dominated by British pattern and yarn makers such as Patons since the 1940s. Subsequently other Irish yarn makers caught on and Tivoli, Sunbeam and Blarney later did the same as Ardfinnan and made in-house Aran patterns.

Six generations of Mulcahy sons since the first John Mulcahy, Mr. Mulcahy leads the legacy of Ardfinnan in view of ever more sustainable and handmade Irish manufacturing principles. Still weaving and knitting small scale, we maintain our values to source a selection of Irish wool from real Irish sheep, crafted into soft scarves or fancy tweeds and finally "baptised" (milled/fulled) in the waters of the River Suir. Our generational knowledge of fabric, colour, style and lifestyle is something we feel we have a duty to share and in doing so we support and collaborate with a variety of Irish crafters to share the Ardfinnan story.

Google Sites

Report abuse