TradeNamesDonnellan & Co on Main Street, Roscommon has developed into a one-stop-shop for the town's fashion needs, writes Rose Doyle

Donnellan & Co has been on the move on Main Street, Roscommon since 1954; up and down, expanding sideways and back, first as a draper shop and pub, later opening a separate ladies' fashion outlet, still later the first fully designated shoe shop in the town.

And through it all Ned Donnellan, who started things in 1954, never managed his ambition to have a second floor in the main shop, have a Donnellan's expansive and large enough to spread over two storeys.

It's there now, a newly developed, two-storey and elegantly transformed Donnellan & Co, architecturally designed around a coolly contemporary interior of marble, polished wood and glass. There's an older building to the side, too, two-storey and with the stone restored, where children come for their clothes and adults for dress hire. Ned Donnellan would have loved it.

He was born in 1915 and when he died in 2000 he had, from his apprenticeship to merchant/owner, been involved in the business life of the town for more than 70 years.

Edward Donnellan, son of Ned, and Paula Nestor, his daughter, look after today's 21st century Donnellans. Agnes Donnellan, the wife Ned married in 1957, is involved too. Always has been, ever since they met working together in O'Connor's, the draper's store on Main Street where Ned served his apprenticeship.

His son and daughter tell the family/business story, both of them taking pleasure in the new menswear shop. Edward is the company's managing director, Paula says she's the secretary but helps out in the, also newly refurbished, ladies outlet. She's modest to a fault.

Her father, she says, was "born and reared next door to Hyde Park, home of the famous Roscommon football team, at Ardsallagh. He was one of a family of nine. They were very small farmers, selling milk from the farm and that kind of thing. They had a rambling, old house. Edward lives there now."

O'Connor's, when he did his apprenticeship, "was a small department store really", Paula says, "it sold furniture and drapery. He spent 27 years working there, and he met my mother, Agnes Leavy from Multyfarnham, Co Westmeath, there. In 1954 he decided to go for his own place and bought these premises. Quite a few of the people who worked in O'Connor's opened businesses of their own. This place was a bar at the time, called Farrells. In 1957 he and my mother married and in 1958 he opened a draper's shop next door to the bar and they lived overhead."

Ned Donnellan was the first bar owner to serve coffee and sandwiches in Roscommon town.

"He used to get a lot of women customers after the fair day and market," Edward explains. "The men would sell animals at the fair, then come in with their wives to the shop. When the deal and the shopping were done my father would bring the husband through to the bar for a drink and treat the wife to a coffee and sandwich. He was really good at customer relations."

"It was the old, country way of doing things," Paula says. "His family home at Ardsallagh was always full of people coming and going, he was used to living that way."

Edward, at home amongst the racks and shelves of fine wool and suits, a measuring tape around his neck, says his father was "very involved in his work, from the bar and lounge to the drapery shop. He sold household goods, sheets, curtains, ladies wear. As time went on he developed the menswear. He was always developing, improving some part of things. He opened the ladies shop up the street in 1964 and called it the Fashion Salon. We moved in over that shop to live then and my mother ran that part of the business."

Frocks sold were by Dorothy Pinock and Ascot models, knitwear was by Highland and Pallas, blouses by London Pride and Cunn Ella. All names to reckon with, then. The family ran the two shops from 1964-1975 at which point Ned Donnellan expanded the men's shop again.

"He was into men's made-to-measure," Edward explains, "he'd order the material needed for suite and spend hours every night getting each lot ready with its canvas, pockets, waistband, lining, buttons for the tailor to work on. The bar was still here then but, in 1979, he decided to open a shoe-shop and close the bar - though he kept the licence. We got the Clarks agency and were able to measure children's shoes with an old-style electronic foot gauge. That was a big thing at the time."

Paula remembers how things worked: "We would have rows of curtain materials on shelves with, in between, 18 inches of shelving from floor-to-ceiling holding gin, vodka, whiskey and that was the off-licence. He sold some wine at Christmas. We were the only off-licence in town, apart from the supermarket. He had a policy of selling as cheaply as the supermarket so he priced the bottles accordingly."

Roscommon was a small town when they were growing up: "Most of the shops were family-owned. There was a population of about 2,500 then; there must be 5,000 now, with the small villages around about are growing rapidly too."

Ned Donnellan was tall and stately. "He was a local who had nothing and ended up with a good business," Paula says. "He wasn't one for going out much. His thing was to improve, all the time. We were known for being expensive but that was because of the quality goods he kept. Work was his life."

Both young Donnellans helped out after school and both, school over, came into the business; Paula straight away, Edward after serving time first in McDonagh's of Eyre Square, Galway and then with Hynes Shoes in Castlebar. He came back to work in the men's and shoe shop.

The years since 1994, when they won "Best Shop Front in Connaught" have been all about development, with the really major changes happening in the last few years. In September this year they had the ladies shop re-vamped and refitted. Streamlined and bright, it carries quality lines in such as nightwear, lingerie, babywear, some household and haberdashery. Agnes lives overhead and all's going well.

The menswear was a long gestating and bigger project. The original building dated from the 1800s but had been added to haphazardly over the years and was unstable at the front.

"We bought the old stone house at the back, so as to get us of the laneway," Edward explains. "It took us four years to get planning permission. We took on architects Douglas Wallace who worked on all different aspects and we got permission to demolish the building in 2003. Owen Dervin & Co did the building and Irish Time Design (Galway) did the interior."

The shoeshop is now to the ground floor rear, on the first floor all the names a man could want to buy are on display - Baumler, Bugatti, Magee, Carl Gross, Van Kollen.

"It didn't just happen over the year," Edward explains, "we'd been building towards it for a long time, getting in styles and names. We've a wide catchment area, Athlone, Castlerea, Longford. We've got free parking out the back. The suit business is so strong we've a tailor on-site for in-house alterations. We've a seamstress too - they're husband and wife, a Lithuanian couple."

Donnellan's is the main agent in town for the half dozen schools locally.

Roscommon town, brother and sister agree, was pretty static during the 1990s but no longer, now it's on the move. "Building of nice developments is going on all around," Paula says, "but a lot of the old families are still running shops in town. There are the same pressures there are in every town but we don't have the population to have parking problems!"

Paula will leave her two offspring to decide for themselves about a career in the business. Edward, who has three young children, says "we'd love someone to keep it on". You get a very strong feeling that someone will.