Letter: Community urged to help build a richer picture of the Dromore area’s linen heritage for upcoming festival
A letter from Kerry Freud:
The Dromore Linen Festival will return from October 1-3, celebrating the past, present and future of the linen industry that once shaped Dromore and its surrounding countryside.
Alongside talks, workshops, local makers and live demonstrations, this year’s festival hopes to build a richer picture of the area’s linen heritage and the local community is being urged to help.
Anyone with a personal or family connection to the linen industry is encouraged to get in touch. This may include people who worked in flax fields, mills, bleaching or beetling works, weaving sheds or stitching factories, as well as those whose parents, grandparents or other relatives were involved.
So much of Dromore’s linen history is still held within local families, in people’s memories, photographs and objects that have been carefully kept over the years. We would love the community to help us bring those individual stories together.
The festival team would particularly like to hear from anyone who has photographs, documents, tools, textiles, garments, factory memorabilia or other objects connected with linen production in Dromore and the surrounding area.
Items may be made available for temporary display during the festival, but contributors do not have to part with anything precious.
The team can photograph objects and include the images and their stories in the festival instead.
Even something that may appear ordinary can tell us a great deal about how people worked and lived. It could be a photograph, a piece of linen, a tool or simply a memory passed down through the family.
Each contribution will help us create a fuller picture of what the industry meant to Dromore.
We are equally interested in the everyday experiences of linen workers: the skills they learned, the conditions in which they worked, the friendships they formed and the ways in which the industry shaped family and community life.
Anyone wishing to share a memory, photograph or object, or to discuss taking part in the festival, can contact the Dromore Linen Festival through its Facebook page.
Kerry Freud, Festival lead, Dromore Linen Festival