TYRONE MANUFACTURING

Samuel Lewis

1837

The linen manufacture has long been the staple of the county, and though it has declined considerably, large quantities are annually manufactured and bleached, principally for the English market. Bleach-greens were numerous in every part, but nearly two-thirds of them are unemployed or converted to other purposes. The linens are all carried in a brown state to the towns of Omagh, Dungannon, Cookstown, Ballygawley, Fintona, and Strabane, and sold in the markets there. The wool of the county, and all that is brought into it, is made up into cloth, blankets, and druggets. The farmers, who are in general linen-weavers, consume the greater part of the cloth and blankets; the druggets are worn by the poorer class of women; the cloth is generally yard wide, and of very good quality. The people are all expert at dyeing for their domestic purposes; they dye various colours, but blue is the favourite. Excellent druggets of two parts wool and one linen are much esteemed.

An economical practice of the wool-spinners is worthy of notice: the root of the common fern is replete during summer with an oily glutinous substance, an excellent substitute for oil or butter; and as wool cannot be manufactured without the aid of some substance of this nature, a pound of wool requiring a quarter of a pound of butter, the common people supply the want of it by cutting the fern root into small pieces, bruising it in a mortar, and pressing out the juice through a cloth. Spades, shovels, and other farming implements, crucibles and other chymical vessels, and fire-bricks, are manufactured very extensively at Coal Island. Tanning is carried on in several places, as is also the manufacture of tobacco, soap, and candles. There is a good ale brewery at Donoughmore; distilleries are worked in various parts. There are large flour-mills at Caledon and Coal Island, plating-mills at Leckpatrick, Fintona and New-mills, and scutch-mills in most parts.

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