Particulars of the woollen fabrics of the county of Cork received from a manufacturer. The woollen trade, serges and camlets, ratteens, friezes, druggets, and narrow cloths, the last they make to 10s. and 12s.
a yard; if they might export to 8s. they are very clear that they could get a great trade for the woollen manufactures of Cork. The wool comes from Galway and Roscommon, combed here by combers, who earn 8s. to 10s. a week, into balls of twenty-four ounces, which is spun into worsteds of twelve skeins to the ball, and exported to Yarmouth for Norwich; the export price, £30 a pack to £33, never before so high; average of them, £26 to £30. Some they work up at home into serges, stuffs, and camlets; the serges at 12d. a yard, thirty-four inches wide; the stuffs sixteen inches, at 18d., the camlets at 9½d. to 13d.; the spinners at 9d. a ball, one in a week; or a ball and half 12d. a week, and attend the family besides; this is done most in Waterford and Kerry, particularly near Killarney; the weavers earn 1s. a day on an average. Full three-fourths of the wool is exported in yarn, and only one-fourth worth worked up. Half the wool of Ireland is combed in the county of Cork.
A very great manufacture of ratteens at Carrick-on-Suir; the bay worsted is for serges, shalloons, etc. Woollen yarn for coarse cloths, which latter have been lost for some years, owing to the high price of wool. The bay export has declined since 1770, which declension is owing to the high price of wool.
No wool smuggled, not even from Kerry; not a sloop’s cargo in twenty years, the price too high; the declension has been considerable. For every
eighty-six packs that are exported, a licence from the Lord Lieutenant, for which £20 is paid.
From the Act of the last sessions of Great Britain for exporting woollen goods for the troops in the pay of Ireland, Mr. Abraham Lane, of Cork, established a new manufacture of army clothing for that purpose, which is the first at Cork, and pays £40 a week in labour only. Upon the whole there has been no increase of woollen manufacture within twenty years. Is clearly of opinion that many fabrics might be worked up here much cheaper than in France, of cloths that the French have beat the English out of; these are, particularly, broadcloths of one yard and half yard wide, from 3s. to 6s. 6d. a yard for the Levant trade. Friezes which are now supplied from Carcassone in Languedoc. Friezes, of twenty-four to twenty-seven inches, at 10d. to 13d. a yard. Flannels, twenty-seven to thirty-six, from 7d. to 14d. Serges of twenty-seven to thirty-six inches, at 7d. to 12d. a yard; these would work up the coarse wool. At Ballynasloe Fair, in July, £200,000 a year bought in wool. There is a manufactory of knit-stocking by the common women about Cork, for eight or ten miles around; the yarn from 12d. to 18d. a pair, and the worsted from 16d. to 20d., and earn from 12d. to 18d. a week. Besides their own consumption, great quantities are sent to the north of Ireland.
All the weavers in the country are confined to towns,
have no land, but small gardens. Bandle, or narrow linen, for home consumption, is made in the western part of the county. Generally speaking, the circumstances of all the manufacturing poor are better than they were twenty years ago. The manufactures have not declined, though the exportation has, owing to the increased home consumptions. Bandon was once the seat of the stuff, camlet, and shag manufacture, but has in seven years declined above three-fourths. Have changed it for the manufacture of coarse green linens, for the London market, from 6d. to 9d. a yard, twenty-seven inches wide; but the number of manufactures in general much lessened.
Rode to the mouth of Cork Harbour; the grounds about it are all fine, bold, and varied, but so bare of trees, that there is not a single view but what pains one in the want of wood. Rents of the tract south of the river Caragoline, from 5s. to 30s.; average, 10s. Not one man in five has a cow, but generally from one to four acres, upon which they have potatoes, and five or six sheep, which they milk, and spin their wool. Labour 5d. in winter, 6d. in summer; many of them for three months in the year live on potatoes and water, the rest of it they have a good deal of fish. But it is remarked, at Kinsale, that when sprats are most plentiful, diseases are most common. Rent for a mere cabin, 10s. Much paring and burning; paring twenty-eight men a day, sow wheat on it and then potatoes;
get great crops. The soil a sharp, stony land; no limestone south of the above river. Manure for potatoes, with sea-weed, for 26s., which gives good crops, but lasts only one year. Sea-sand much used; no shells in it. Farms rise to two or three hundred acres, but are hired in partnership.