MONTY'S POEM

摘要

The production of linen cloth became one of the mainstay industries in the north of Ireland at the end of the eighteenth and into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, progressing initially from a hand loom home based pursuit to mechanisation in factories and mills employing tens of thousands. The industry is now a shadow of its former self with the greatest decline taking place in the 1960s to the present day. I feel privileged to have worked in many factories and mills at the latter end of this mighty endeavour and to have witnessed the dedication of all those involved, before market pressures brought their labours to an end. I remember well the mills, Jennymount, Brookfield, Edenderry, Ross's, Greeves's and also the far flung Sion Mills in the County Tyrone. My mother worked as a weaver in John Shaw Brown's Factory beside the River Lagan between Belfast and Lisburn It was there that she met my father who had acquired his engineering skills under my grandfather in the linen establishment of McClelland's, Banbridae. Co. Down.