BENCHMARKS continued
“In the early morning, the shirt factory horn
called women from Creggan, the Moor and the Bog.”
With numerous factories, Derry was once famous for shirt manufacturing, an industry that gave employment almost exclusively to girls and women. (And for a while there were even some smaller factory units located across the border e.g. Belvoir in Newtowncunningham and Clubman in Buncrana.) And those factory workers didn't just come from Derry City. Benchmarker remembers how many women from Newtown, Kildrum and Killea took the bus into the city. Some of them used to disembark on Foyle Road near Craigavon Bridge, their stop for the Tillie and Henderson shirt factory. When it opened in the 1850s, Tillie's was the largest shirt factory in the world. Almost 150 years later it ceased production. In 2002, derelict, it caught fire and the following year was demolished.
Interestingly, in the novel Trinity by Leon Uris, some of the action happens in a shirt factory located at almost exactly the same spot where Tillie's stood. In the book the factory is destroyed in a fire with great loss of life.
This one was spotted on Tillie's Brae, the narrow pathway that runs between Craigavon Bridge and the site of the the former building. (A brae is a Scottish word meaning a small hill or slope.)
Below: The'mark on Tillie's Brae.
Above: The 'mark is on the wall between the supports of the direction sign on the right. The wall is part of the west side of Craigavon Bridge. Behind the hoarding is the site of the former Tillie and Henderson shirt factory.
"For what's done is done and what's won is won
and what's lost is lost and gone forever."
