Historical Archive
Northern Standard Newspaper Article – Friday, February 3, 1978: KELLY’S – Monaghan’s ‘old firm’
THE KELLYs have been doing things with timber in Monaghan since 1908-three generations of them!
It was in 1908 that the late Mr. Packie Kelly set up his first sawmill opposite the Garda Barracks where Plantation Terrace now is.
In 1922, he moved his operation to the Broad Road and continued to supply builders with boards of all kinds. It wasn’t a business that took up his entire interest for he was a noted cattle-breeder whose bulls figured regularly in the prize-lists of the R.D.S.
His sons, Messrs. Patrick and Tim Kelly, took over the business as their father devoted more and more of his interest to his prize cattle and the extent of the workshop grew to factory proportions. They maintained their father’s high reputation for turning out a good product and continued to do this when building trends changed.
CHANGES
There came the day when men no longer purchased the timber to make their own doors and windows and the Kelly Brothers moved to meet the challenge of the new era in building. In 1947 they turned to the manufacture of complete doors and windows and soon did a thriving business with builders’ providers all over Ireland. Their reputation for integrity and the reliability of their product grew with their market and a disastrous fire at the Broad Road factory in 1968 precipitated a decision that was fast becoming inevitable—to move to more spacious premises.
They became the first factory on the Rossmore Industrial Estate where they now employ a staff of thirty skilled highly paid craftsmen turning out doors and windows that go all over the country.
Kelly Bros. became a limited company when they moved to their new premises in 1968, but the firm retained its friendly family atmosphere. It was a new modern factory with the most up-to-date machinery but the tradition of friendliness and commitment to the firm was the same and the men involved were in a position to improve their reputation for high quality products.
This spirit that pervades the factory has been very apparent in local football competitions in Soccer and Gaelic where the staff as a body turns out in fervent support of their team “Kelly’s men” enliven all the competitions in which they participate and their spirit brings them considerable success in these as a Cup in the office reminded us.
ESTABLISHED MARKET
In our chat at the factory on Tuesday, we gleaned that the friendliness extends as well. Customers were spoken of as ald friends. The explanation obviously is that the Kelly tradition of meticulous workmanship led to trouble-free relationships with customers that made for friendly relations with even big impersonal firms.
Mr. Kelly told us that around forty per cent of production was taken up by the Northern Ireland market. This in itself is eloquent of the excellent job done at the Rossmore Park factory for the Northern businessman has a name for getting hold of the best in quality and value. We guessed that Kelly Bros, was a firm that operated on team-work. “Every man is a key man here. Each has to do his own job perfectly or the end product isn’t up to standard.” And in our walk through the factory this became apparent in the way the various operatives went about their jobs. A rather ribald piece in large letters on the door of the sawdoctor’s shop left us in no doubt that “boss” was a word that meant little here.
It was Kevin Kelly who took the trouble to explain the various operations to us. Nor could we manage to get a photograph of either of the two chiefs or their two sons who have now become involved in the business, making the third generation of Kelly’s to be doing things with timber in Monaghan.
THE FACTORY
So to our walk around with Kevin Kelly. Only someone like your reporter who remembered the firm at the Broad Road in the ‘thirties and ‘forties could appreciate the growth of Kelly’s. One section of the acre or two of timber-yard was bigger than the whole Broad Road premises of those days. Redwood from Sweden and teak and mahogany from Africa were the raw materials we saw piled high in the sheds. We saw the timber being kiln-dried in a plant in the yard before passing into another line of sheds from which the factory floor was fed.
We saw Brian McGuirk, John Nicholl and Maurice McCarey operating the machines that provided the timbers in the required lengths. We saw the length several at a time–being through the planing machines that pared and smoothed them to the required thickness. Sheets of Wood were quickly fed through machines that accurately turned them out to the required panel sizes. All were the most modern and efficient machines of their kind and your reporter had a memory flash-back to the days when he stood at the big doors of the Broad Road factory and watched whirring circular saws and men using hand-saws and chisels. Now men adjusted the graded slides of huge machines and passed the timber through quickly. The on-ward march of technology! And the more intricate fitting cuts were put in the components with equal speed and efficiency by the huge tenon machines that carved the tongues and grooves out of the timber.
PRESERVING PROCESS
And then Kevin took us to see the latest piece of technology introduced to prevent your doors and windows from warping through the effect of the weather-the Vac-Vac impregnation method. Here the components are immersed in a preservative liquid for a minimum of three minutes before passing into cylindrical pressure chambers where they are impregnated with the preservative under pressure. Thus the lasting qualities of the high-class timbers used are increased. But, kiln-dried and impregnated with preservative, the protection against warping must be very long-term indeed.
We then saw the components passing on to be fitted into the shapes of doors and windows on huge cramping machines and at last we saw something that had survived in the business—hammers and mallets—as joiners pinned the various joints for greater security. The solidity of the Kelly products is based on perfect fitting and secure pinning of the joints. The final product then passed for finishing to the huge sanding machines operated by Sean Mulligan and colleagues and thence to the dispatch bay.
END PRODUCT
Kelly Bros. Ltd. have their own distinctive designs in outside doors–hall-doors and back-doors. They also manufacture inside doors for rooms and a variety of window sizes and designs. We did get one surprise, however, We learned that the building industry is operating double standards! They haven’t yet gone completely over to the metric system.
Some house designs are according to the Imperial standard (inches) and others metric. This obviously creates a production problem for a firm like Kelly Bros. Not only have they to adjust the production line to their various designs but to differing measurements for those designs. But Mr. Kelly made light of the problem. “The same customer orders both metric and imperial measurements from us and we supply them,” he said.
And, we thought, that summed up the Kelly Bros. attitude that has given them such a reputation for reliability–they give the customer just what he wants.
Kelly Bros. is one of Monaghan’s oldest indigenous industries–a firm with a tradition. It has developed through changing times in the building industry and through three generations of men. The younger members of the family now involved will probably see it through a century of productive life.
