How eco enthusiasts are reviving the region's linen heritage 200 years after its decline

IT’S rare to find a plant as versatile as flax: you can eat it for breakfast, wear it as linen, burn it as biofuel and it can even be found as a component in Formula 1 seats.

So it’s no surprise that this multiuse, multifunctional crop is making a comeback. 

Flax linen production was a vital industry in West Cork up to the early 19th century providing work for thousands of people in growing, processing, spinning and weaving.

It was widely grown and harvested across the region, including on Cape Clear Island where much of it was used to make sail cloth.

Con O’Neill from Clonakilty Dúchas shared a historical account about the string smell during production, which was so intense that it drove locals in Ballineen to burn down a mill opened by a Clonakilty mill owner.

Clonakilty Market
In a past edition of The Southern Star you could read about flax linen sales in Clonakilty in 1824: ‘An important trade is carried on in the manufacture of coarse linen, for the sale of which a weekly market is held on Fridays in a spacious hall, erected by the Earl of Shannon for the accommodation of the dealers. 

‘Within the last three years there has been a very considerable increase in this branch of industry, and upwards of ten thousand persons are now employed in the various processes of the manufacture in this and the neighbouring town of Ross, and the surrounding district, whence the linens are brought for sale to the public market.’ 

Buyers from Cork and Bandon would come to the market to buy the high-quality linen on commission for wealthy buyers from England and Scotland, with weekly market sales reaching upwards of £1,000. At the time, wool was being imported from England to Ireland, with countless yards of Irish linen being shipped out of Ireland. The Irish flax linen industry reached its peak in 1864/65 when around 300,000 acres of flax were grown. It came to an end around 60 years later.

Historical threads
Fast forward 200 years and eco artist Kathy Kirwan is organising a series of workshops under the title ‘Flax - Threads of Time’ to celebrate and commemorate the lasting impact of this heritage industry.

‘By 1826 the flax industry had completely collapsed. There had been a famine a few years before and there was also a lot of industrial pressure on flax,’ said Kathy, who is also part of West Cork’s Flax Lín Community. ‘The Cotton Wars had finished and the geopolitics of the world affected how much flax was grown. 

‘This year is about acknowledging the hard work people were doing in the past. We want to capture their legacy and honour their achievements in whatever way we can.’ 

As part of the wide-ranging bicentennial programme, a group of flax enthusiasts met last month at Fernhill House Hotel, Clonakilty for a day of workshops.

The morning session saw Helen and Charlie Mallon share their knowledge of sowing and growing flax on their farm in Cookstown, County Tyrone.

The experienced flax growers explained about different seed varieties, including heritage varieties like Northern Queen.

Harvest hands
They also shared their approach to rotating the flax crop every seven years, regularly replacing it with oats, wheat, barley and also under-sowing it with clover to keep weeds out, all without chemical sprays and with low environmental impact. 

During the workshop local farmer Michael Coughlan demonstrated a seed fiddle bought from a local co-op that has been in his family’s possession for around 100 years, still in good working condition.

The workshop group learned that the length of the flax growing season is 100 days, starting in spring. 

Back in the day in County Tyrone train loads of men would come from County Antrim to Ballymena to pull the flax once it was ready.

Irish linen was known for its high quality because it was pulled by hands rather than harvested with machinery.

As part of their presentation, Helen and Charlie Mallon showed images of harvested flax, dried in the field in bundles leaning against each other, and traditionally tied together with rushes.

The bundles are then placed with the seed heads down into water into what’s known as the retting pond. 

The harvest on the Mallon Linen farm now attracts lots of farm helpers every year, including students who study textile making and design who want to find out more about the origin of fabrics. 

Mallon to Mizen

The curiosity in flax, also known as linseed, has caught on across all ages and backgrounds, with groups such as Clonakilty Tidy Towns, the Women’s and Men’s Shed, the GAA, secondary school students and Clonakilty Dúchas all attending the workshop in March. 

Among the participants on the day was Noreen Minihan who recalled the days of flax processing in Clonakilty in the 1940s.

‘We used to cycle on our bikes and would take a deep breath once we got to the causeway because of the smell of the flax. At communion if you knelt next to someone who worked in flax it was desperate,’ Noreen Minihan remembered.

What became clear throughout the day was that flax is emerging as a vital fibre in offering eco-friendly alternatives in textiles, construction and bioplastics. As part of the bicentenary celebrations, Kathy Kirwan is working alongside other flax advocates on a series of Growing Local Heritage events, which include community flax growing and an old time fair. 

Another immersive event, The Blue Fields of Memory, allows participants enter a reimagined Irish landscape of the past, where Clonakilty flax fields sway in the breeze and linnets fly by.

And the flax community is also creating a digital multidisciplinary heritage installation in conjunction with Wombat media. 

But the most ambitious of the initiatives yet is spanning the whole island and known as the Mallon to Mizen Project: community groups across Ireland are working together to create an equivalent in flax thread of the 405km distance between the two places. The project is testament to the fact that flax was, and still is, deeply woven into Irish culture.