Congested
Districts Board
The Congested District Board [CDB] was established by the British
Government in 1891 toencourgae economic and social development in the 'congested'
districts of the West, North West and South West of Ireland. It had long been argued by
some officials and by many commentators that some sort of governmental action was needed
to provide industry for the surplus labour in the countryside, if the country was to avoid
repeating the devastation caused by the Famine and the subsequent mass emigration. The CDB
was an agency ahead of its time in many ways, and played a crucial role in rejuvenating
Donegal industries like fishing and tweed. The CDB was responsible, amongst other
ventures, for promoting the manufacture of Donegal carpets.
A certain Mr. Wrench, a member of the Congested Districts Board, met
Alexander Morton, the head of a textile firm based in Darvel in Ayrshire, while attending
the Belfast horse show in 1897. Morton, born in 1844, had started his working life as a
weaver, and built up a business making a variety of textile products, lace chenille and
tapestry; machinery woven carpets accounted for a quarter of his sales by the end of the
century. He had for some time been thinking about getting into hand-made high quality
carpets, and had been considering the west of Ireland as a possible base, given the
abundance of labour. The meeting with Wrench galvanised him, and having looked at sites in
Ardara, Glenties, Kilcar and Gleann Cholm Cille eventually settled on Killybegs. By 1898
the factory was in operation. Morton, an entrepreneur with the ambition typical of late
19th century Scots, launched into the business with great enthusiasm, bringing in staff
with experience in making Axminster carpets, supervising the building of the factory, and
actually investing twice as much in setting up the business as he had agreed with the CDB.
Morton decided that Killybegs carpets would be from the first a
quality product, made by hand in a process which had been in use for centuries in those
countries where the craft had evolved, for instance Turkey and Iran. Morton’s
publicity claimed that Killybegs carpets were "similar in substance to the finest
Anatolian carpets". He ensured that most of the designs used in the early years were
Turkish or Persian in origin. The factory accommodated up to four hundred workers, and the
employees, mostly young women, sat side by side in front of woollen warps stretched
vertically between two long horizontal rollers. They selected lengths of pre-cut wool,
knotting them in the Turkish fashion to the threads of the warp. By the beginning of the
new century Morton was using Celtic designs, the first documented example being shown at
the Cork Exhibition in 1902. Donegal or Killybegs carpets earned a great name in the
business and continued to be made until after World War II, although the factory was in
decline for more than a decade before it was closed in 1954. The business has recently
been revived, and high quality hand-made carpets are again being made in Killybegs.
The Congested Districts Board was concerned not only with
carpet-making, but with industries associated with Donegal, such as fishing and
tweed-making. The efforts of the CDB were a great boost to the fishing industry in
Killybegs and other ports. During the 1890s a new pier was approved for Killybegs, with
the £10,000 cost being borne jointly by the Board and the Treasury. The CDB also invested
in new fishing craft and in fish processing. The coming of the railway from Donegal Town
west to Killybegs in 1893 meant that there was a much quicker way of getting the catch to
market.
One of the most remarkable members of the Board was Rev. Patrick
O’Donnell, who had become the youngest Catholic bishop of his day when ordained for
the See of Raphoe in 1888. O’Donnell was born in Kilraine, not far from Glenties on
the road to Ardara. He served on the Board from 1892 until its remit ended with
Independence, and devoted a considerable amount of time to the CDB. He it was who
commissioned the carpet factory in Killybegs to make an alter carpet with a Celtic design
for the new Cathedral in Letterkenny, which opened in 1901, the summer before the factory
exhibited its Celtic designs at the Cork Exhibition. He later became Archbishop of Armagh,
and a Cardinal. His close relationship with the people of the congested districts of
Donegal, most of them Gaelic speakers like him, gave the CDB a measure of credibility in
the county which it otherwise might not have had.
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