Growing up in Cork in the fifties and sixties I was always aware of a certain privilege attached to the name Dwyer.
When introduced to someone new there was always that little flicker of the eyes and the question “Are you related to….”
In the fifties I enjoyed this, even basked a little in the reflected glory.
It must have been, I often think, the main reason why I, a particularly wimpish child, was never bullied in school.
In the sixties, of course, as a revolting teenager, I forswore such reflected glory.
How could a child of the revolution possibly claim status from being descended from one of Corks Merchant Princes?
My family in fact were just that.

Between 1820 and 1980, they were one of the largest employers in Cork, they ran a dynastic empire from an enormous base which took up a major piece of Washington Street in Cork.

Calling Card/Blotter found by my Waterford friend Tom Power in his aunts old shop

They had founded and ran a stable of successful manufacturing businesses ; Sunbeam Wolsey, Seafield Gentex, Perdix Shirts and Knitwear, Templemichael Mills, The Lee Boot Factory, Hanover Shoes.
They employed thousands of Cork people for 160 years, there was hardly a household in Cork without a member who hadn’t worked for the Dwyers at one time or another.

However this all came to an end in the eighties.

Due to various causes, an over virile great grandfather, who produced three separate families and the failure of the remaining members to modernise and embrace a whole different attitude to trade, the business closed in the nineteen eighties.

I remember when I moved to Waterford in the early Eighties my new boss, George Gossip of Ballinakill House, coming to me one day and saying “My aunt tells me you are one of “The Dwyers of Cork” would you ever tell me what that means.”

The truth of the matter is of course that our fame was a strictly local phenomenon and outside Cork, other than in those families whose shops were provisioned by Dwyers, little was known about us.

About four years ago, spurred on mainly by my brother Ted, we decided that, for the sake of the generations to come, we should try to put together the story of our remarkable family and their rise and decline in Cork.
We were lucky to persuade the brilliant Mary Leland to write this for us.

At last the book is ready for publication, is with the printers, and will be officially launched in November-in time for Christmas!
(And I think I have persuaded RTE’s Nationwide to cover the launch)

Amazon have agreed to handle it for us so if anyone is interested in purchase I will keep you informed as soon as it is cold from the press.