The mother of all Irish stores is Blarney Woollen Mills, the largest Irish heritage store in the world.

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BLARNEY, Ireland — I am not a shopper. When I need something, I go find it and buy it and don’t spend a lot of time worrying about it.

I don’t really want anything. However, I do make exceptions. And I am a sucker for Irish stores. I got hooked when we stumbled upon Irish Design in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, in 2017. Then Out of Ireland was a superb store in Victoria, British Columbia, we found in 2018. 

Give me an Irish store, and I go up and down every aisle.

And the mother of all Irish stores is Blarney Woollen Mills, the largest Irish heritage store in the world. It is housed in the historic Blarney Woollen Mills, which opened in 1823 and was a working textile mill for 150 years. Also in the complex are two restaurants and a hotel, the latter of which is our home for these three days in County Cork.

Time for total honesty. I have been mostly looking forward to not the Cliffs of Moher nor ancient Dublin, not the Blarney Stone nor the Ring of Kerry. I have been mostly looking forward to shopping at Blarney Woollen Mills.

And I wasn’t disappointed. The 40,000-square foot store includes three floors and all kinds of treasures. I sort of now understand how women (and I suppose some men) can make shopping their passion and entertainment. Good thing we have to catch the train back to Dublin on Wednesday morning, else I’d probably find myself back on the middle floor of Blarney Woollen Mills.

The store draws more than 600,000 visitors per year; that’s an average of 1,600 or so per day, many of them courtesy of the tour buses that come to Blarney and park between the store and Blarney Castle, allowing tourists to hit two major attractions with one stop.

The men’s floor had few customers Tuesday morning, so I wandered around alone for about an hour, making a list of the items that caught my eye. 

Eventually, Trish the Dish, having finished her own shopping adventure, joined me, along with her sister, Carolyn Williams, and our cousin-in-law, Gary Nelson. They teamed to help finish off my shopping excursion.

Berry Tramel’s Ireland travelblog: Getting to the Blarney Stone is a harrowing journey. Kissing the Blarney Stone is even more difficult. https://t.co/VKVXuRZB5d

— Sellout Crowd (@selloutcrowd_) May 6, 2024

I ended up with a coat, a sweater and a shirt. It’s really about the only time I splurge on myself, unless you count the shrimp fajitas at Tarahumara.

I don’t know what draws me to Irish fashion, but the colors are great, starting with the deep greens, and the quality is high, and the texture is something I can stand to live with.

And the cool thing about buying something on a trip, is that everytime you wear it going forward, it takes you back to that special time.

The Blarney Woollen Mills story is steeped in history, like most every Irish story.

By the 1700s, Cork had a harbor and a highly-developed textile trade. So a man named Timothy Mahony of County Kerry came to Cork and established his first little woollen mill on the Glashaboy River in nearby Glanmire. 

Timothy Mahony’s grandson eventually opened a new, larger mill in nearby Blarney in 1823, on the river Martin, close to Blarney Castle. Its original name was Martin Mahony & Brothers; later it became known as Blarney Woollen Mills.

The mills became quite the community success. Local farmers sold the wool from their sheep, and the team dyed and spun it into yarn for knitting, which also was woven into cloth.

By 1835, Mahony’s business employed 135 workers. By 1860, 200.

Blarney was in many ways a company town. The Mahony family built Millstream Row, an attractive set of homes, for its employees. Those homes still stand today. Because of the steady work, Blarney largely was spared from the horrors of the Irish Potato Famine, 1847-54.

Blarney Woollen Mills is famous now. It was famous 160 years ago.

Cork poet John Fitzgerald wrote in 1865: “The Blarney Mills, where world-famed Blarney Tweeds are made.”

In 1869, the mill caught fire and burned to the ground in six hours. The villagers rallied to rebuild, and the building standing today is the result.

By 1900, employment had risen to 800. Blarney Woollen Mills tweed sold at the top end of the market in London, Paris and New York.

And in 1914, Christy Kelleher was born near Blarney. In 1928, at age 14, Christy started working as a mill boy. For five years, he cycled into Cork after work to study mechanics and soon enough became mill supervisor, overseeing the running and maintenance of the heavy industrial machinery.

Christy was industrious and a dreamer. He always had a side gig and always had a new plan, often because his wife, Maureen, was good at saving money.

Christy guided the machines through World War II, even with parts scarce. But in the late 1940s, Christy was fired by Blarney Woollen Mills, after he helped fix a worker’s watch while on company time.

Christy already was working part-time for an insurance company. To support his family of seven kids, Christy dabbled in transportation, sold vegetables and harvested an entire orchard, the latter with help from his family.

And in 1961, Christy bought the Emer Ballroom, which proved to be a hot weekend spot as the rock’n’roll era arrived. Christy provided buses for patrons to and from Cork city on weekends. The ballroom doubled as a movie house during the week, and the entire Kelleher clan pitched in to make the enterprises work.

Blarney Castle and the Blarney Stone had become quite the tourist attractions, but nothing else about Blarney was alluring. Christy hatched the plan of a mobile craft shop, on wheels, rolling it about two kilometers from Killard to Blarney.

Yes. You read that right. Billed as a “Traditional Thatched Cottage,” the mobile shop sold Aran sweaters, woollen shawls, crocheted goods and small gifts.

Freda, Christy’s 16-year-old daughter, quit school to run the shop. The first day in business reaped 14 pounds in business. The Kellehers knew they were on to something.

Berry Tramel’s Ireland travelblog: Getting to the Blarney Stone is a harrowing journey. Kissing the Blarney Stone is even more difficult. https://t.co/VKVXuRZB5d

— Sellout Crowd (@selloutcrowd_) May 6, 2024

The Clancy Brothers, of Ireland, had become American music stars in the late 1960s, and their signature Aran sweaters were a hit.

Meanwhile, Blarney Woollen Mills was declining, with changes in tariffs and importing practices, demand for Irish-spun wools and woven textiles.

To stay afloat, the Mahonys in 1972 offered their Millstream Row homes for sale to the tenants, but by 1973, the gates were shut and Blarney Woollen Mills went up for sale.

A 200-year-old family business, gone. The machines were dismantled and sold off. Blarney had an empty, old mill.

Christy Kelleher decided to buy the mill. He haggled the price down to 70,000 pounds, he paid a down payment, he sold the Emer Building and the entire family, including some of his grown children, re-mortgaged their homes and took out personal loans. They raised the money to buy the mill. Finally, a bank relented and provided the additional working capital.

And in 1975, at age 61, Christy Kelleher became the owner of Blarney Woollen Mills. He turned it into the first large-scale store dedicated to Irish clothing.

It was a big risk, but it became a big reward. Blarney Woollen Mills had no cheap imports. It had a strong commitment to genuine Irish craftsmanship

Christy decided to open a bar, so men would have a place to hang while their wives shopped. But the liquor licenses were maxed out. One loophole was a hotel could have a bar. So Christy opened a hotel in part of the mill.

Today, Blarney Woollen Mills has the boutique hotel, two restaurants (including the night-time pub that is named “Christy’s) and the massive store, which employs 200.

Christy Kelleher died in 1991. In his later years, he would greet the touring buses and even climb aboard, welcoming the shoppers.

And that 16-year-old daughter who ran the mobile craft shop in the late 1960s? She now is Freda Hayes and is chief executive officer of Blarney Woollen Mills. That mobile craft shop, that “Traditional Thatched Cottage,” still sits in the Blarney Woollen Mills parking lot. The Irish respect their history.