To coincide with Culture Date With D8, 7th to 11th May, the window display at Space Out Sister is all about the history of Glen Abbey, once the leading manufacturer in Ireland of knitwear, sportswear, slumber wear and underwear.
Glen Abbey On Patrick Street
The Liberties & Patrick Street has a rich history of textile and fashion related businesses to the present day. The Huguenot weavers 'ran parallel with the new brewing, distilling, textile and backing enterprises and by flourishing writing, publishing and music endeavours in The Liberties' in the 1600s.
(The Liberties, A History by Maurice Curtis)
In the 1800s & 1900s, Patrick Street was home to several establishments, including Eliza O'Loughlin who ran a linen and woollen drapery, Anne Ryan who operated a haberdashery, Elizabeth Griffiths managed a "Fancy Warehouse" and La Moderne, owned by Mrs. Mavis Molony.
(Readkong)
Glen Abbey Textiles, founded by brothers Colm (1919-2003) and Rory (b.1917) Barnes, had many locations throughout its history and had a location on Patrick Street. The brothers former C. and R. Barnes in September 1939 making ladies and children's underwear. The outbreak of WWII created trade restrictions and difficulties, however by 1945, the brothers renamed to Glen Abbey Mill and made mens knitwear under the Glen Abbey label. They had become the brand leader in Ireland.
...'Dynamic & Progressive'...
The Barnes brothers, joint management directors, began each day with breakfast together in their factory office. Rory focused on production, while Colm, affable and good humoured, dealt with sales, becoming the public face of Glen Abbey and was active from the 1950s in various business organisations who laid the intellectual groundwork for the renewal of the post war economy.
'The business thrived by establishing a reputation for quality and by forming close relationships with retailers, most auspiciously with St. Bernard, Dunnes Stores.'
(The Dictionary of Irish Biography, Acadamh Ríoga na hÉireann, Royal Irish Academy)
70% of employees were female and with the acquisitions of the Bradmola Mills hosiery business (1964) and the Dublin Hosiery Company (1968), Glen Abbey employed 1,100 and four major divisions comprising of underwear, socks, slumber wear, tights, mens knitwear and lingerie. It was, by 1968, the largest employer within the clothing sector.
David Bagnall Remembers Working At Glen Abbey...
'Glen Abbey was in my family for my whole life...I was born in 1964...my mother was a top machinist...The trim stores which my father ran, it had threads, buttons, zips, all the edging, trimmings and transfers and all the little flowery bits that were embellished onto clothes...There was a cutting room, which there was two long tables and two men working on each table and they used to do all the pattern cutting... the pattern cutter...he would go on with a marker...the pattern was laid out to get the maximum amount of cuts so there could be 50 layers of material...there was the cutter, he ran a big band saw which was suspended over the table and he would zig zag in around all these patterns and cut it... Also on the ground floor was the fabric stores, industrial shelving and the fabric all came in on pallets...There was two floors over that and they were all sewing rooms and to my recollection there was probably about 300 women...They all had a specific job, say if they were making knickers, someone would sew the main bodies together, someone would sew on the trims, and then someone who would gather them all at the end and put them in piles of ten or twenty at the end...
Glen Abbey used to make vests, underwear men and women's, nightdresses, PJs...
In Blackrock they had a factory they used to make stockings, tights, pop socks, they kind of operated separately. The third factory on Belgard Road, was split into two parts, the dye house and the knitting room. The knitting room made the fabric and it was literally threads come in that were put on what looked like tree branches with hundreds of needles on each machine that needed to be threaded by mechanics and knitters...In the middle there was a revolving pole...it rolled on as it was going and when finished, a sample roll was taken out...put through a machine and quality control would look for drop stitches...depending on the material there was a certain amount of drop stitches per roll, if anything over that, the machine had to be stopped and reset.
Then the dye house, the other half of the knitting room...it stank to high heaven...with rotation around the clock, the knitters would knit the material...they would be told what colours, then to big vats. Then when it was dyed, it went into huge washing machines and then pressed.
My first time working in Glen Abbey...I used to do Summer work...and work in the trim stores and the fabric stores all during my teens I worked there. Most of the people working there were from around The Liberties, Crumlin, Ballyfermot...all able to get buses in straight. In general I'd say there was a great atmosphere...Of a Friday, there was a pub two doors away, another couple of doors down around the corner and Lynch's across the road...Everyone knew all the staff and each other. It was a real family base...There was never any end to the people wanting to work there.
There was lots of interaction from people around...we had a staff shop...cost price...staff bought Winstanleys, they used to make leather shoes. We all used to go to Myra Bakery of Francis Street, pink slices, cream donuts, apple tarts and snow cakes...Brian was front of house and knew everybody...always a busy shop, so popular and they would finish at 11am and then there was nothing left! So if you didn't get in early, you didn't get anything.
I used to do the quality control on the material (in Belgard) and I worked in the knitting and the dye house. When the three day week came in the 80s...A janitor vacancy came up for the cleaning around, doing messages for the lunches and checking the materials fro the drop stitches...
There was a compulsory order put on Glen Abbey in Patrick Street, they wanted to do that new road up to Christ Church...they closed the factory and bought a place in Cherry Orchard, and a Scottish company took them over, called Babygrow, making babygrows and baby clothes...'
Mr & Mrs Joyce who owned Myra Bakery on Francis Street, famous for their pink slices, donuts, apple tarts & snow cakes.
The Glen Abbey Show on RTÉ
The Glen Abbey Show was on RTÉ radio from the 1970s, featuring Frank Kelly, best known for his role in Father Ted as Father Jack. It was co-written with journalist David Hanly and know for its satirical sketches, including the character Gobmait O'Lúnasa, a rural figure beginning monologues with, "Hello! Guess who? Is that you Nuala?"
The window display about Glen Abbey continues at 88 Francis Street until the end of May.
My utmost thanks to Deirdre Macken, David Bagnall & Zoë from Irish Label Archive for all their help bringing the window display & blog post together.