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Thriving factory became eyesore - became supermarket

A Photo Report

THE CAMERA never lies and equally 'every picture is worth a thousand words'.

Valerie Finan, cancer campaigner extraordinaire, is also a camera hobbyist.

She photographed the site which is now Lidl supermarket on Crannmore Road....as it changed over decades.

The original site saw Sligo Spinning Factory announced in 1955 and opened in 1957.

The factory burned to the ground in August 1962 while employing over 200 people.

Original Tower

The fire catastrophe came within months of a major new extension had just been added to the factory.

That extension was located where gravel is piled up on site in a 1995 photo.



















The house in the background left -- a protected structure in law -- also burned down in later years.

The factory site was subsequently used by, among others, Musgrave Cash and Carry and Yorkshire spinning mill owners Samuel Lumb, who were not the operators of the original enterprise.

The original tower of the spinning factory and administrative block remained intact over the decades after the fire.




















All buildings onsite were eventually demolished in August 1999.

Old Eyesore

Nothing at all happened the site for years and it was unclear if the eyesore of old might become an eyesore anew.

Finally, new girders arrived on site in August 2002 -- almost forty years to the day after the fire disaster-- to commence construction of the Lidl supermarket.



















The site's transformation has been completed with flattened alignments plus the addition of a new car park.

Readers with photos of the fire aftermath, colour or black and white, would be welcome to submit same to news@sligotoday.ie