This historic building, on the way into Bessbrook was recently demolished. There are very few remaining anywhere in the district. They were located close to rivers where water could be diverted and utilised as a source of power.
The Foundry Newry
This one, known latterly as Bailey’s Foundry actually started life as a spinning mill in the late eighteenth century. Also availing of the adjacent river there was a flour mill alongside it. The first owners were Jacksons. At the time – the early decades of the nineteenth century, there was also another spinning mill in Bessbrook operated by Joseph Nicholson.
This was the height of the First Industrial Revolution and most advances took place in textiles manufacture. The big change at this particular time was the introduction of wet-spinning. Nicholson got a grant from the Irish Linen Board to experiment here with wet-spinning.
By about 1830 people named Smith from Newry owned Derramore Estate (this is a mere generation after the infamous Isaac Corry, Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer) and all structures within it – including these mills and foundries.
A further generation on and it all was owned (in the 1860s) by Richardsons. A granite works was added to the complex of buildings – known locally as the ‘granite polishing shops’.
The Bailey referred to earlier came on the scene at the turn of the twentieth century. Then the spinning mill became a foundry employing up to thirty people. A variety of ironmongery goods was manufactured right up until its closure in the 1970s.
Now, even the ancient building is gone!
I studied foundry technology and metallurgy and decided to start a foundry at my home at Mullaglass. My father who worked in Fishers garage knew Teddy Bailey who owned Bailey’s foundry at Bessbrook and introduced me to Mr. Bailey and as the foundry was then about to close down, I purchased two furnaces and a number of moulding box’s,and other foundry equipment which I still have. My father got an old Mobil car dated I think around the turn of the century (1900) and we the family helped to clean it up and John Fisher said to my father to bring it into Fisher’s garage to finish it off and it was subsequently sent of to the Ulster folk and Transport Museum where it was on display for many years, but has now been taken to there store. I have Photos of it when it was first collected ( no tyres ) I built the foundry in 1973 and the roof that I put on was of the Donegal shed where the Liverpool ferry sailed from Belfast and the building is still standing today, but alas the foundry and its equipment was moved to Ballymartin in County Antrim, where I now live.