08/09/2026
To everyone who's joined us here recently, céad míle fáilte ☘️ We're delighted to have you.
I recorded this video last year, and it tells the story of when my Mum and Dad, Michael and Kathleen O'Toole, first opened the doors of the Sheep & Wool Centre here in Leenane back in 1992. It was officially opened by the wonderful Mary Robinson, past President of Ireland, and I remember how proud my mother was that day. She was a Mayo woman herself, and even though we're based here in Galway, having the centre opened by a fellow Mayo woman meant the world to her.
Today, we're just as committed to what they started. My father spent his career as an agricultural scientist specialising in sheep, and he poured that knowledge, and his love of this land and its people, into building somewhere that could preserve and share Connemara's wool traditions. Now I'm proud to carry that on as a family business.
Our story is also part of a much older one. Wool has shaped life in Leenane since the late 1880s, when the Congested Districts Board revived weaving here, with workshops at the Leenane Hotel run by its owner, Robert McKeown, producing hand-woven tweeds sold both at home and abroad. Even after that scheme ended, local weavers kept the craft alive. By the 1950s, wool merchant John M. Joyce was buying the finest fleece from farmers along the west coast, running a busy Wool Store on the Westport Road, just across from his family home, Bayview House, both still remembered fondly around here today.
At the centre, we bring all of that history back to life. The looms still clatter, the spinning wheels still hum, and visitors get to see, first-hand, techniques that are as sustainable now as they ever were. We hope everyone who walks through our door leaves with a real feel for the connection between sheep, wool and the people of Connemara, a connection that shaped our past and still warms our present.
