Early in the 1900's, a working man set up a small factory for the manufacture of baskets at Aghagallon, which is in the south west corner of County Antrim near Lough Neagh's banks.

In it he provided constant employment for about 30 men until the outbreak of the Second World War.

The founder, James Mulholland, had previously made a precarious living by fishing on Lough Neagh in season and making baskets at home for his parents who hawked potato baskets around local market towns and sold yeast skeps to a Belfast merchant. This had been a long established family custom.

In post-Plantation times the Seymour Conways, Marquesses of Hertford, were landlords of 60,000 acres of land in South Antrim, one of the biggest estates in Ireland stretching from the Crumlin River to the Lagan and from Derriaghy to Lough Neagh.

Gawley's Gate where James Mulholland was born, was once the gateway to the Earl of Hertford's extensive deerpark, but it is now only a small road junction with a pub and a sub post-office.

Southwest Antrim was once the land of the great oakwood and the number of adjoining townlands therein all prefixed 'Derry' ('Oakwood') are a relic of those bygone days.

The rich timberlands were the prizes given to the Undertakers who were appointed by the Crown in Plantation days to drive out the Irish and replace them with English settlers. Some of the natives were allowed to settle in the boglands. Undertakers were not permitted to let them settle on 'hard bottom' land.

People of English origin had most of the big farms locally in James Mulholland's day, but most of the smaller holdings were in the hands of people of Irish extraction who were paying land purchase annuities to English landlords.

Cottier houses erected on farms were let to working class people, with a lucky few having tenancies of labourer's cottages. These were the only dwellings which were referred to as 'cottages' in local parlance.

It would be difficult to visualise a more depressed area than Lough Neagh's banks in the early part of the 20th century.

Those who claimed ownership of the fishing rights on Lough Neagh were constantly harrying the fishermen who, it must be said, refused to pay attention to any regulations. The few sizeable farmers within walking distance of Gawley's Gate mostly had family labour.

Some labourers attended hiring fairs and migrated from the Montiaghs, but the terms offered by hirers were singularly unattractive, say, £18 a half year with board, circa 1920.

Boat hauling on the now disused Lagan Canal provided an outlet for some men who had been able to raise the price of a horse (50 shillings, i.e. £2.40). More than one generation of some families were boathaulers. Other men got work 'on the bank' as bargemen, lock-keepers and labourers on canal maintenance.

The Lavery and O'Neill family of Derryhirk; the McVeigh brothers of Aghalee; the Creaney brothers of Derryclone; the Heaneys of Cranagh; the Douglas' of 'Blow Cottage', Aghagallon; the Fegan family of Turtle Dove Lock; Felix McStravick and Harry O'Rawe are some of the names which I have been given.

The cottage industry of handloom weaving of flax had died out shortly before Mulholland started up his factory, but many local women were doing 'white work' (thread-drawing and hem stitching) as outworkers for Lurgan or Magheralin linen handkerchief factories.

A few Aghagallon women wrought in these factories, but there was no public transport, and only those who could afford a bicycle could get there.

As well, competition from workers who lived within range of the mill horn in tied houses owned by the linen lords, and who constituted an ample pool of labour, left rural dwellers out in the cold.

Many Lurgan textile factories had such a big pool of reserve labour that, from the unemployment benefits scheme commenced in 1912, they always kept a group temporarily stopped.

They arranged for all their workers to take it in turn to go 'on the buroo'. When those who were signing-on had drawn out their benefit they were reinstated in the factory, and others were 'put on the buroo' - pawns on their master's chessboard.

As outworkers, women got only a penny or two per dozen handkerchiefs which they processed, and very often they had to sit up at night to meet their employer's schedule.

The extensive area of peat bogs extending along the Lough shore, known as the Montiaghs, was the principal source of fuel for local residents. Most farmers had turbary rights, i.e. the ownership of a small area of bog and the right to cut turf.

Around the Lough shore, turf men, fish men, hen men, ragmen, and other itinerant dealers proliferated and moved around on foot or in 'springcarts' between the wars.

All the occupiers of the wee whitewashed thatched cabins that dotted the shores of Bartin's Bay from Derryclone Point to Gawley's Gate had a miserable existence in the early 20th century.

The little cabins enhanced the scenery, and would have been an artist's delight, but they were whitewashed walls of misery for the inhabitants.

With earthen floors, tiny windows, primitive furniture, chaff palliasses for bedding, and without running water, indoor toilets, and gas or electricity, hardship prevailed. "There was money for nothing and nobody had anything" is how one octogenarian summed it all up.

According to the German basket museum authorities, basket making is of prehistoric origin. It is, therefore, not surprising to find that it featured in the earliest census and ordnance survey records relating to Aghagallon and Ballinderry in south west Antrim.

As long ago as 1802, one writer mentioned a celebrated maker of baskets who was found at Kilwarlin, Moira (about 4 miles from Aghagallon) "who made a wide range of basketware from strong clothes baskets to elegant services for deserts and fruit baskets equal to anything imported from France."

Ordnance survey maps of the 1830's featured osier beds at George's Island, Moss Vale, Bog Head, Derrynaseer and Poobles also around Lough Beg and Lower Ballinderry, County Antrim.

Census notes relating to Ballinderry mention William, Jane and Margaret Dornan of Ballinderry and John and James Magee, Lurgill, as basket-makers.

Arthur Lavery and Henry Lochert of the same address are down as hamper makers; James Garland, Lurgill, as basket-maker; James and Ellen Brankin, Montiaghs, Aghagallon, as white basket-makers; and William McKeveney, same address, as basket-maker.

The mention of white baskets is of particular significance. This shows that there have always been two strands: baskets made of green or unpeeled osiers, and the peeled rod variety.

Traditionally Aghagallon basket-makers mostly used locally grown, unpeeled osiers and made strong baskets, but some families specialised in fancy baskets made from peeled home-grown osiers or imported white rods.

There were two sets of brothers with identical names, James and Willie Mulholland: one pair made potato baskets and yeast hampers only, using unpeeled locally grown osiers. The other pair made fancy baskets from fine white rods.

The brothers only lived half a mile apart, the fact of which a stranger lacking local knowledge would find confusing.

Photograph from the Ulster Folk Museum Green Collection showing basket weaving at Gawley's Gate.

Patrick Smyth. Co. Armargh. 2002