TradeNames:A fourth generation of Murphys is about to take over the family business in Newcastle West, Co Limerick, writes Rose Doyle

Michael Murphy is a born storyteller. He could have, and would have, told Trade Names the story of Newcastle West, Co Limerick from when it was a stone on a river's bank. But time being of the essence he confined himself to telling the story of the Murphy family business; or how a men's outfitters came to be at the heart of the town's Maiden Street for 118 years.

This, too, benefited from the telling, taking the odd digression and dabbling in lives lived along the way.

"My grandfather, Michael Murphy," he began, "opened the business in Maiden Street in the year of our lord 1889. He brought it up to 1922. It started as a small drapers shop but he was a qualified baker, all the Murphys were, and sold bread too. So did my father. I used come in after school to paint up the loaves.

"My grandfather married Mary Duhig, a girl from Broadford, Co Limerick."

He gives a small chortle: "Mr Vincent Browne, the journalist, comes from there. I knew his father and mother well. They used come into the shop."

There's more on the Brownes but, his grandmother's story being more vital to things, he goes on with her story. "She was born in a lovely little townland behind Broadford called Killiagh. I've always felt it was money from her father that started the Murphy business; he owned about eight houses in Killiagh."

And so to another small digression. "My grandfather was coach to Newcastle West senior hurling team. Under his wing he'd Bill Hough, who was All-Ireland champion in 1923 and whose brother John has a son Kevin, a second cousin of mine, in RTÉ. Anyway, my grandfather brought the team to Adare on May 22nd, 1922, for a championship and dropped dead at the match. He was 68. The match was postponed and my father brought him home in a small car, there being no ambulance.

"My father, born in 1887, took over the business. He'd been sent to Dublin to train in 1907-1908, in Hickey's of North Earl Street. It's Boyers now. He lived above the shop with four or five others, paying for their training, and had to examine the bread to see which side was buttered, they were fed so badly. He loved Dublin and used say a lot of Jewish people came there at that time, went into drapery and tailoring. He had many good Jewish friends."

The first Michael Murphy and his wife Mary had four children. Their eldest was Kathleen, followed by Josephine who was followed by Paddy (father of today's Michael). Last of all came Michael.

"My father, Paddy, married a Newcastle West girl called Eileen Roche when he was 43 and she 28. Late for him, but the business had to be built up and, for a while, wasn't doing well. My mother Eileen was the eldest of a family of 10. All dead. She's dead too. Each of the 10 did better than the other in life, becoming army colonels, two or three of the girls becoming nurses and marrying surgeons, one becoming a hairdresser in Brisbane."

Michael Murphy's maternal grandfather was a draper, too, with a shop on the square in Newcastle West which "used be called Roche's but is now Ella Maria's. The best fashion house in Ireland. Mary O'Rourke TD was in there the other day. That's the kind of business they do . . . top class. My wife goes there when there's a sale on."

Paddy Murphy, his father, was born to run a men's outfitters.

"He was mad for style and always wore a dickie bow. He looked like Alfie Byrne, the lord mayor of Dublin; he was a small man who loved shoes. He was well liked and witty. When the English travellers would come into the shop, all tall, fine men, selling linens and such, he'd say to the likes of Tootle Broadhurst that, if he was as tall as him, nothing in the world would stop him doing what he wanted. He always took care of the poor and helped people out.

"He was a courier for the old IRA, when the IRA was highly respected; he'd turn in his grave if he could see how things turned out afterwards.

"He was mad about horses and rode out on Prince Regent, who went on to win the Grand National. His main faults were good looking women and good looking animals! He was honourable. Money came second with him . . . I'm a bit like that myself.

"My father, in the early days, sold everything: household goods; linens; towels; buttons; and bows. My mother worked at the end of the shop which was, and is, about 1,200sq ft with good frontage."

Paddy and Eileen Murphy, living with their family over the shop, had a happy life together, albeit one blighted by the great sadness of the deaths of two of their five children.

Maria, their first born, worked in Clerys and now lives in Dublin. Michael came next and went to Mungret College in Limerick city. Tom, the third born, was "sent to Clongowes. A fashion expert, he opened Tom's Boutique in Bridge Street, Newcastle West in 1971, the year our mother died. He left in 1972, went to Malaga and worked in the fashion industry there. He's lived in Gibraltar for the last few years. Rasher O'Flaherty's is where his boutique was, selling all kinds of tourist things."

In 1948, within three weeks of one another, Paddy and Eileen Murphy's two younger daughters, Michael Murphy's sisters, died. "One died of diptheria, one of meningitis," Michael says. "My mother got over it, in her way, but I'd say my father never did."

Paddy Murphy "built up the business" and died on December 22nd, 1967.

"He always said that when he went he'd go at a tricky time," his son says, "and he was buried on Christmas Eve. I opened the shop after the funeral; people had orders and couldn't be let down. He was born at the other end of Maiden Street and, before he died, my father went to say goodbye to 'all his Maiden Street people'. Then he came back to the shop and died. He'd a heart attack, knew he was on his way out. He was 78."

Michael Murphy's "first love" was medicine - there are many doctors and nurses in the family - but his father needed him so he started in the shop after finishing school in 1956. Six years later he married Geraldine Fitzgerald. "Her father was a bank manager in Killaloe when I met her and, from the first, I thought her honest and fair.

"We were selling everything from blankets to Wellingtons but I changed it to men's clothing only. It's gone well."

He tells about the changeover period, about Johnny Moon who'd spent 35 years working in the shop, about Curly McCarthy and others, about prices and value and Crombie coats lasting for 50 years. He and Geraldine have three off-spring: daughter Colette, "who has her own business in Galway and has a pure eejit made out of me!", and sons Declan and Michael.

The latter is married and lives in Barcelona and it's Declan, living in Sydney, who will be coming home with wife Kate and two children to take over the business in November.

"I'll move out, officially, and do a bit of computer work. You only have a business on loan for a few years, then you pass it on to your children."

Will he miss it? "I don't know. It's here and I'll be in and out. I love golf and am very involved with it."

There was a population of 2,800 in Newcastle West when Michael Murphy was born there 65 years ago. Today there are about 9,500; "Newcastle West has changed a terrible lot!"

But some things don't: like the time-tested wisdoms he'll pass on to Declan in November.

Prices are to be kept reasonable because: "Why overcharge our own people, those who kept us here for 118 years?

"And you have to be careful; it takes years to build a business but minutes to close it down. I think Declan thinks the way I do anyway."