Belleek’s living encyclopedia: Sean O’Loughlin looks back

That in itself is quite a tale, but there is so much more to the highly-eloquent and erudite Sean O’Loughlin (84), of Quay House, Corry, Belleek.

He is also a walking, talking encyclopaedia of the history of his area, of his people, the multi-gifted O’Loughlin and Timoney clans, and of the Devenish GAA team which he played for and served with such distinction from the late 1950s to the present time.

His late father, Tommy O’Loughlin, invented a patent for a bicycle and his brother Joe is a well-known local historian, while another brother, Pat, won an All-Ireland Junior medal with Fermanagh footballers in 1959, and has run countless marathons for charity and in modern times, Sean is also a second cousin of star Ulster rugby player, Nick Timoney.

His nephew, Paul O’Loughlin, lined out with Fermanagh Senior footballers in the late 1980s

There is nothing “slow” or gauche about Sean O’Loughlin. He is a man of great courage, character, industry and diplomacy, overcoming some “bad beatings” from the most “Un-Christian” De La Salle brothers in Ballyshannon, and entering the world of work at 15-something, which he relished as an escape from the horror of his educational experience.

His life story is one of how natural intelligence, hard work, innate good judgement, and a great feeling for his fellow man have carved out a rich life for a true gentleman.

But perhaps one of his most remarkable achievements was in helping another great GAA worker – Sean Treacy of Garrison – in compiling a very well-received history of the Devenish GAA club for their centenary year in 2017, which came out in 2018, and won a GAA President’s Award in 2019.

Sean has five Fermanagh SFC titles and six SFL titles which he won with a great Devenish team in the 1960s when he was young and wore the bright, invincible armour of youth.

He took up cycling in his 60s and has completed no less than 12 Mara Cycles between Dublin and Belfast, and is rightly proud of the medals he received in more than a decade.

His lovely home in Corry is like a museum to local and world history, and he is one of the best-read people you could meet, and not afraid to call a spade exactly just that.

Sean was born in 1939 – in the house in which he is sitting – in Corry, where on this mild January morning the silver waves of the river Erne were gliding gently past.

He was born in July, 1939, and quips he was “blamed for starting the Second World War”.

Sean has vague memories of planes flying over Belleek in 1945, and “we lay down on our backs in a summer meadow looking up at them”.

His mother, Mary O’Loughlin (neé Tiimoney) kept men who were working at the building of Castle Archdale aerodrome.

He went to Belleek Primary and was taught by Master Egan, from Mayo.

“I was a slow learner and I decided fairly quickly that I was not good enough to do the 11 Plus – never mind pass it.

“I used to say to youngsters who failed it that I was not even good enough to sit it.”

At the age of ten, in 1949, he cycled to the De La Salle Brothers school in Ballyshannon – a distance of four miles.

It was not a happy experience, and Sean described them as the “non-Christian brothers”.

“The standard of education was much lower in the Republic and the 11 Plus course was two years ahead of theirs.

“I was good at reading and writing, but the Irish language beat me, as I could not grasp it at all.

“I was beaten with the strap for not knowing the Irish, and you were beaten if you were not getting on right in Religion and Poetry.

“I liked poetry, but if you could not learn it off by heart, you were hammered.

“I also saw other lads getting unmerciful beatings, some with a cane, and others with a strap.”

But there was also a “snobbery” attached to being educated by the De La Salle brothers, according to Sean.

“To me, every street was the same in Ballyshannon, but there was class distinction as the better-offs lived in certain streets, and there were other streets where the poorer people lived, and their children got terrible beatings.

“Some of the snobs looked down on Benildus Avenue, which was then known as Falgarragh Park, but one of my best friends, Seamus Gallagher, was from there, and he went on to become a champion Irish boxer, and the late Barney Daly of Belleek was married to his sister, the late Anna Daly.

“As far as I was concerned, they were all Ballyshannon men, and all equal.

“Even at that age, I wondered why the better-offs were treated so much better at school.”

School was out, and he looked for a job for the building of the bridge at Belleek by Farren’s, and got one as a “nipper” in February, 1955, when he was just 15.

It was a happy time for Sean, and he loved every minute of it.

“Because of all the beatings and hammerings I got at the school in Ballyshannon, the happiest day of my life was when I got away from it.

“For all my life, I loved work of all kinds, and it never bothered me, coming back from holidays, going back to work, and I was just so lucky in that respect.

“In a strange way, the beatings helped me, as I appreciated everything else after that.”

There were more than 40 men working on the bridge, and every Friday Sean got a tip of a shilling.

“At the start, I was earning £2 and ten shillings, and you got another £2 on top in tips.

“We were a poor family, so the money came in handy.

“It was a great time, and then I got a job in Belleek Pottery in May, 1956, when I was 16.”

The pottery employed 140 people when Sean joined, and he spent many happy years there until he left in 1985 to set up Donegal Parian China, from where he retired in 2000 when it was bought out by Belleek Pottery.

Sean O'Loughlin working on a piece of Belleek Pottery in 1958.

Sean was sent to a Parian craftsman – the late Pat McCaffrey – who was a Fermanagh GAA star, and his son, Arthur, captained the Erne County to an Ulster final in 1982.

“Pat was the best Parian man ever in Belleek Pottery, and he taught me everything, and had great patience.

“I made cream jugs, sugar bowls, small vases and then I progressed on to teapots and statues and figurines.”

And thanks to Pat McCaffrey’s teaching, Sean ended up making anything and everything in that great grey Victorian picture-postcard building on the banks of the Erne.

“There was a great buzz there and in our workshop. We had Pat McCaffrey, Patsy Gonigle, Patsy Keown, Jimmy Gilfedder, Tom Smith, Packie Gonigle, ‘Wee Hugh’ O’Connor, Robbie Mullin, George Leonard, John Boyle – the taxi man, Jim Kelly and Philip Dolan, and they were all into GAA.

“I was very interested in sport, GAA and soccer, and Stanley Matthews was one of my heroes, and I could never understand why the GAA banned its players from playing soccer and foreign games, and banned members of the police and army from playing Gaelic games.”

Sean was already showing management skills and he was given the job of training 20 apprentices at the pottery as Belleek China was much sought after in the Second World War, as the soldiers had money and were buying Parian and sending it back to the US.

“Baskets and big figurines were very popular.”

The pottery was booming in the Swinging 60s as 26-year-old Sean was given even more responsibility.

One of the apprentices he trained was Philip Cleary, who later went on to become a fellow director of Donegal Parian with Sean, along with Benny Carty and Danny Breslin from Derry City.

Sean was made Production Foreman in 1968 and he knew he had to be careful as he would be dealing with men who had been in the pottery for 30 or 40 years, and he was only in the building for more than a decade.

“I took it handy, and tried to treat everyone the same way as I would like to be treated, and I was later promoted to Production Manager.

“I never went in with authority, as that was wrong. I never looked for promotion, but I never refused one either.

“I always went in to work an hour earlier at 8am when the rest of the staff began at 9am.”

Belleek Pottery..

The mid-1970s were a boom time for the pottery, and it had a workforce of 255 people. Some of its Parian men were making bigger salaries on piece work as the demand in the US remained steady.

But wages were not great for those who were not on piece work, and the china was priced pretty low.

The union became more active in these times. There were hints of strikes, and wages went up in

Sean’s view was that the pottery lost its marketing skill in the US by entrusting it to the now defunct Waterford Glass. “Waterford Glass bought Aynsley China, so naturally that was going to be their first priority.”

Sean had noticed that Aynsley China was in many outlets all over the place. He had a good grasp of the pottery’s reach through a number of trips abroad.

But he discovered that not much china was in the stores, but much of it was in a Waterford Glass store in New Jersey.

Sean heard various “explanations” for this, but none were too plausible, in his view.

The cold winds of recession came with a chilling effect in the early 1980s, as the pottery entered a very chilly period.

Meanwhile, wages for piece work were high, and Sean, who was a manager in the pottery by now, learned from a BBC Radio report that Belleek Pottery was going into receivership in 1982.

“I knew nothing about it.”

In 1983, the pottery was bought by another concern at a time of turbulence.

Meanwhile, Sean – who was an authority on the history of Belleek, and was giving talks to various groups – found this a very trying time as his life seemed to be coming to a crossroads.

“Belleek Pottery was my whole life, but the new concern and I did not see eye to eye.”

In the interim, Sean had promoted Philip Cleary and Benny Carty to supervisory roles in Production.

“They were good Parian men, and we had not got a rise in wages for a few years. We realised that eventually if the pottery was taken over again, they would normally bring in their own management team, and we would be gone.

“So, we decided to jump before we were pushed.”

Sean first met his later fellow Donegal Parian Director Danny Breslin, from Derry City, when he was brought in by the IDB to look at the viability of the operation.

Sean left the pottery on October 5, 1985, and it was “one of the hardest things I have ever done, as Belleek was in my blood and in my bones.

“It was heartbreaking, and Philip and Benny felt the same as we had grown up there.

“We had been planning to leave since April, making our preparations, getting supplies of clay, machinery and kilns.

“I went over to England on a shopping expedition, and it was all in confidence, and in fairness, the supply companies never let me down.

“We went into the new premises in Portnason, Ballyshannon on October 6, 1985.

“At first, we were in a small industrial unit, and then as production increased, we went into a bigger premises.”

Sean, Philip and Benny were baking and making Parian – but this time it was Donegal Parian.

Sean’s role was technical, to get the materials and the glazes right. “We started making small vases and small flower-pots and then we progressed to tea sets.

“Danny Breslin came up with the title as Donegal was a good strong brand in the name itself.

“Initially, we employed around 12 people, but at our height, we had a workforce of 55.

“Belleek were putting up their prices to overcome their problems, but we knew that if you could produce a quality product at a competitive price, then there had to be a market for it.

“The only thing we did not realise was that there was such a big market for it.”

Sean stressed that while he and his partners had left Belleek Pottery, they would not say or do anything to hurt Belleek.

“There were ex-employees of Belleek that I had started myself, who came to us, and we did not employ people who were still working in Belleek.

“We employed mostly country people from Kinlough and Ballyshannon, and I worked there until 2000, when we were bought out by Belleek, and all operations ceased in Portnason in 2005.”

Once again, the GAA was a big selling point for Donegal Parian.

“Tom Daly, a very well-known figure in Ballyshannon, Donegal and Ulster, had suggested that we have an award for the Man of the Match when Donegal were playing NFL and championship games.

“It proved to be very successful. and it was a great marketing ploy, as we were in the papers, which was good publicity.

“All the clubs in Donegal were very good to us, as they had vases for all their presentation and awards nights.

“And we supplied it to them at a discount, and Tom Daly was a great help here.

“We were making money by then, and there was a special Donegal GAA Vase made for the clubs.

“We sold thousands of those in a period of 15 years.”

However, they were not able to break into the US market, nor the UK – but they did a reasonable trade-in mail orders.

“The late Danny Breslin was a real star as he had worked for the IDA in the Republic and the IDB in the North and various banks.

“But it gave us all a new lease of life and we worked hard and we made so many contacts in the GAA.

“Danny was a soccer man, and had caps for Northern Ireland at schoolboy level, and had great contacts in the Derry City club.

“Derry was great for us, and we had a big market there, and Danny had great contacts in the Derry Journal, so we got loads of publicity there, and Radio Foyle used Donegal Parian China as their prizes.

“We also sponsored the De La Salle College annual Opportunity Knocks in Ballyshannon, which was a mighty help to us as well.”

At its peak, Donegal Parian China had a turnover of just over £2m.

“But it took a lot of detailed planning, and we had been at it for months.

“It is no secret, but we were actually outselling Belleek [China], North and South, for a period in the years between 1985 and 2000.”

Sean had 15 good years in the company and Benny and Danny left in 2000 after Belleek bought the company, while Philip stayed on as manager of the Visitors Centre until the factory closed down in 2005.

It closed mainly because the sales of giftware around the world were plummeting, and it was time to go.

Sean was 61 when he left Donegal Parian China, and as a fit man, he took up cycling.

All the O’Loughlin clan never do things by halves, so Sean was a familiar figure around the roads of Belleek, west Fermanagh and south Donegal.

When he retired, he also went on holidays to England, the US and Australia to visit relatives.

“I was well used to not working by then, and I cycled fairly strongly until I was about 70.

“I did not want to quit, but a disc gave up in my back, and I did the Belfast to Dublin Mara Cycle for ten years. It was 100 miles each way, and it made me very fit and I did the Border Trek.

“I also want to pay tribute to the late Peter McDonnell, from Belleek, who raised a huge amount of money for charity over the years.

“During the wintertime I would do 20-30 miles at the weekend to keep ticking over, and when March came in, I would start increasing that.

“I still walk to and from Belleek, as age has caught up with me, I am not able to do any more.”

But like his brothers Joe and Pat, Sean is a keen local historian, and is doing a family tree of his mother and father’s people – the Timoney and O’Loughlin clans.

“The Timoneys were all great readers, and they were self-taught, and my grandfather, James Timoney, was the manager of Belleek Creamery.

“Our mother encouraged us to read and we graduated from comics to books. Her people came from Whealt on the Shore Road.”

Sean and the rest of his family went to an O’Loughlin Clan reunion in their homeplace of North Clare the year the Banner County won the All-Ireland hurling title in 1995.

“I got a photo taken with Ger ‘The Sparrow’ O’Loughlin with the Liam McCarthy Cup.

“It was 1995, and we were told that an ancestor, Thomas O’Loughlin, came up to Fermanagh from North Clare. He was a travelling teacher around 1830, and he came to Druminillar, close to Belleek.

“The Penal Laws against the Roman Catholics meant they were barred from teaching, so the masters went around from parish to parish.”

Sean’s father, Thomas O’Loughlin, was an innovative businessman who was born in 1895 and he went into Ballyshannon to learn the bicycle trade from a man named Grant in the East Port in the town.

“The ball bearings on the bicycles would wear out through water and rust, and the whole unit had to be replaced. He invented an oil gun and a valve that he drilled into the frames of the bicycles, and the oil gun squirted in to oil it, and it kept the ball bearing lubricated, and that was in the 1930s.

“He started in business in 1918, in the place where Marie McGuinness’s pharmacy is now.

“But due to his training to be an Irish Volunteer, his premises were raided, partly on the word of an ‘informer’, and his equipment was thrown out on the main street, and it was classed as an ‘eviction’.

“He moved up to the premises that my brother Joe ran for many years, and my nephew Richard is there now.”

Meanwhile, Sean took on a major project at the age of 78 when he helped Sean Treacy put together an award-winning Centenary history of the Devenish club, which came out in 2018.

“That involved a lot of research in Enniskillen and Bundoran libraries, and the Fermanagh Herald to a lesser extent, but it was a labour of love and I learned so much from it.”

Sean was also a prolific photographer for Willie John Duffy of the Fermanagh News, and this interview is but a fraction of his truly rich and full life.

Indeed, listening to Sean’s effortless social history of the famous pottery, and of his area, is a truly educational experience as well.