Mulcahy Redmond (MR & Co.), established 1869, was a family-run woollen and garment manufacturing company at the Ardfinnan Woollen Mills that traded as Ardfinnan in the village of Ardfinnan, County Tipperary, Ireland. Ardfinnan Woollen Mills may date to the 12th century, as a monastic woollen mills.
A woollen and worsted mills, it became known as the last mills tied with Ireland's oldest and most famous wool exports from Waterford City. It was acclaimed for restoring local wool industry, early association with Savile Row, premium frieze and tweed patronised by royalty, melton for hunt coats, green tweed with the first Aer Lingus uniforms, worsted suitings with Éamon de Valera, knitting yarn with The Clancy Brothers, luxury handwoven tweed, ready-made suits and sport coats as the only factory on the island of Ireland completing all stages of production from fleece to clothing in the 20th century.
History
Early history The mills on the River Suir adjoined an ancient monastery, attributed to Saint Finnian. Saint Carthage and his monks took refuge here c.632 AD, developing Ardfinnan Abbey and the village on the river bank, along with his great school of western learning at Lismore Abbey further south on the same path. This brought sheep for parchment and wool, weaving for vestments and milling for flour in the centre of the fertile valley. After Henry II visited the monastery in 1171, it became an early preceptory of the Knights Templar, fortified with the royal Ardfinnan Castle, one of the first three Norman Crown castles in Ireland and completed by Prince John in 1185.The Suir, From Its Source to the Sea, L. M. McCraith, Clonmel, 1912 It is believed that the Templars established the vertically-integrated Ardfinnan woollen mills with the introduction of water-powered fulling at the abbeys watermill, having introduced the first fulling mills in England alongside the Cistercians also by 1185. The first Cistercian monastery in the south of Ireland was neighboring Ardfinnan downstream at De Surio Abbey. Adjoining cottages of textile workers, extended from the fulling mill along Factory Hill Road to Saint Finnian's Church, becoming the medieval town, or burgage, of Ardfynan. Frieze cloth locally flourished with 13th to 16th century demand for woollen Irish cloaks to mainland Europe from the port of Waterford, where the Templars had free passage. Dyers principally ran fulling mills in this era and it is recorded that a freeman named William the Dyer lived in Ardfynan in 1295.Following Trial of the Templars, Edward II granted pontage for three years to the "bailiffs and good men of Ardfynan" in 1311, supporting the mills that were built on the bridge, until the Knights Hospitaller took over.Ardfinnan Castle, The Illustrated Dublin Journal, Vol. 1, Number 6, Dublin, George Petrie, October 12, 1861REGISTRUM DE KILMAINHAM, REGISTER OF CHAPTER ACTS OF THE HOSPITAL OF SAINT JOHN OF JERUSALEM IN IRELAND, 1326-1339, Irish Manuscripts Commission, Dublin, 1932 A Carmelite friary and Franciscan friary also established at either side of the river banks. Ardfynan was uniquely exempt from customs and sanctions from 1449 by act of the Parliament of Ireland. Subsumed by the Bishopric of Waterford and Lismore during the Reformation, the mills remained a valuable ecclesiastical asset until the 19th century.The Place names of the Decies, Rev. Power, P, London, 1907Journal of the Waterford & South-East of Ireland Archeological Society, Vol X., 1907., pp. 1-5, Waterford, N. HARVEY& CO. Strong traditions of hand-weaving and spinning in cottages on Factory Hill Road alongside the "woollen factory" continued into the 19th century, with Ardfinnan Clothing Club established after the devastation of the Great Famine as an annual used-clothing market. Traditionally the village green was used for tentering cloth and drying wool, from sheep in the surrounding valley and Galtee, Knockmealdown and Comeragh mountains. Mulcahy family John Mulcahy (1756-1854) worked with John Daly of Rossmore Mills upstream when they showcased Irish frieze for gentlemen’s clothing and horse blankets internationally for the first time and made early connections with London’s Savile Row. This was achieved when they represented the Irish woollen industry among ten firms in 1851 at the Great Exhibition in London.The Knights Hospitaller of St. John of Jerusalem at Kilmainham,Barrow, G. Lennox, Dublin Historical Record, vol. 38, no. 3, 1985, pp. 108–12. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30100662. Accessed 8 Mar. 2026. Just four of these representatives were outside of Dublin and they solely represented County Tipperary. Rossmore Mills was formerly on the Knights Templar’s largest Irish landholding at Clonulty Preceptory adjacent to the sacred wool producing Cistercian Holycross Abbey. Their respective children John J. Mulcahy and Mary F. Mulcahy (née. Daly) of Rossmore Mills, revived the "Ardfinnan woollen factory" from March 1869 from the adjoining Mill House below Ardfinnan Castle.Journal of The Waterford & South-East of Ireland Archaeological Society, Volume VII, Harvey & Co. 1901
Ardfinnan was advantageously geographically situated and closer to Shanbally Castle were they sourced fine wool from the prestigious South Down and Merino crossbred flocks of Cornelious O'Callaghan."The Woollen Manufacture", Clonmel chronicle and Waterford Advertiser, Clonmel, June 30, 1883. George O'Callaghan succeeded his father as the Queen’s representative for Tipperary as Lord Lieutenant of Tipperary and his second home from 1867 was on Old Burlington Street, adjacent to Savile Row. At Ardfinnan a waterwheel powered the old-fashioned fulling stocks in the watermill and employment was around a dozen.Ardfinnan Woollen Factory, Clonmel Chronicle, 31 January 1885 The Suir flowed through the watermill via an extensive weir and a short mill race before exiting under one of the 14 arches of the medieval Ardfinnan bridge. It was along the coach road from Dublin to Cork which introduced tourists, was serviced by steamtrain via Cahir and later steamboat to Waterford.THROUGH TIPPERARY, Waterford Citizen, Waterford, 8 October 1869 The watermill was likely in this advantageous position since the construction of the bridge, soon after the castle in 1185.Industrial Ireland 1750-1930: An Archaeology, Colin Rynne, Collins Press, 2006
Award of Commendation was given for frieze exhibited by John J. Mulcahy of Ardfinnan at the Irish Exhibition of Arts and Manufactures, 1882.Jurors' Awards, CLASS C-TEXTILE FABRICS., SECTION 12. Record of the Irish Exhibition of Arts and Manufactures, 1882, Dublin, pp. 50 In June 1883 he took lease of Castlegrace Mills, near Clogheen, to establish a third woollen mills, between Ardfinnan and Shanbally Castle.
On October 1, 1883 a fire gutted the main five-story watermill building at Ardfinnan and damaged Mulcahy's adjoining former family home at Mill House, with 50 to 100 workers affected. Two children trapped during the fire in the uppermost loft jumped from a window and were caught in the arms of a mill foreman and a constable, receiving minor injuries.Exeter Times
In 1884 Mulcahy was honored by Queen Victoria as a Commissioner of the Peace. The watermill was restored as a double-roofed structure, retaining the original walkout basement, engineered by a Dublin builder to house a water turbine built in New Jersey, United States by T.C. Alcott & Son. It was among only two other mills in Munster to use a water turbine, being Ashgrove Woollen Mills and Kerry Woollen Mills. The building was open plan with central supporting pillars, and had a monastic style bell for work hours, adjoining communal canteen and retained the much older castellated annex office with gothic door and gate that survived the fire. It was "fitted on an extensive scale with the most improved machinery known in England or America for the manufacture of the very best Irish tweeds". This included Cheviot tweed, the gold standard for tweed, from local sheep and shepherds that were supported by the Mulcahy family, in the Knockmealdown and Comeragh mountains on the Waterford Tipperary border uplands. Mulcahy overhauled Rossmore Mills until he sold the site in 1890.CLEARANCE SALE AT ROSSMORE MILLS, Clonmel Chronicle, 22 February 1890. Mulcahy Redmond & Co. (MR & Co.) exhibited at the Royal Dublin Society Irish Artisans' Exhibition 1885.THE IRISH ARTISANS' EXHIBITION, Clonmel Chronicle, 29 July 1885 They advertised in the late 1880s as makers of Irish tweeds, friezes, blankets, shawls and railway rugs.
MR & Co. represented the Irish woollen industry among 12 firms at the Cork International Exhibition of 1902. It was reported as the last woollen mills on the River Suir, a river that had previously powered the most wool mills in Ireland since at least the 17th century. Showcased were their specialties "the best Cheviots" tweeds renowned as "ne plus ultra", blue and black serges, clerical suitings, meltons (for riding jackets) friezes, ladies mantlings, locally handwoven homespuns adapted for "cyclists and tourist wear" and "Galtee travelling rugs", all produced from Irish wool.A Successful Local Industry, Nationalist, Clonmel, 7 June 1902
Galtee Motor Cloth John Mulcahy’s first son Frank Mulcahy was born at the mills and attended Rockwell College and a West Yorkshire technical school. He married Kathleen Crean, whose family descended from the wool "merchant princes" of 16th century Sligo and who had revived the woollen industry in Clonmel also on the River Suir during the industrial revolution and were very personally and politically tied to Daniel O’Connell, who famously wore a frieze coat to represent the Irish people when he was the first Catholic to sit in the British Parliament. A politician and philanthropist Frank was also one of the first motorcar owners in the Tipperary region, with a Oldsmobile Curved Dash.The Irish Motor Directory (Dundalk, 1907),pp. 59-61 Frank patented Galtee Motor Cloth in 1906, an innovation combining warmth with a unique waterproof-breathable functionality. Named after the Galtee Mountains and targeting the emerging motoring clothing market, it was advertised as "the warmest cloth ever made for motor coats and motor rugs". It was a layered cloth of traditional Irish frieze that the Mulcahy family had perfected and mohair inter-woven with merino. The weave was breathable when dry, described as hygienic, but as the surface became wet the weave contracted and became rainproof.Health's Highway, R.J. Mecredy, Yellon, Williams & Co. Ltd., 1909 This functionality was lacking in popular fur coats, rubber Mackintosh or cotton Burberry raincoats. It has similarities with Loden cloth.
In November 1906 King Edward VII ordered Galtee Motor Cloth from MR & Co. and had a motoring coat made from it at his respective Savile Row tailoring house, followed by an expression of his satisfaction. At the time, Edward VII's royal household was the first in the world to adopt the use of the motorcar. Edward VII, Queen Alexandra and Princess Victoria visited Ardfinnan Woollen Mills during their May 1904 private tour of Ireland by motorcar, en route between Shanbally Castle with its pedigree sheep on the Galtee mountains and Lismore Castle (sister castle of Ardfinnan Castle) over the Cheviot flocked Knockmealdown mountains. Their respective hosts, Lady Pole-Carew, Lady Constance Butler, Reginald Pole-Carew at Shanbally and the 8th Duke of Devonshire at Lismore were influential local patrons of the mills.