TradeNames:Now with a fifth generation of the Lumley family in charge, J A Lumley & Sons looks set to stay close to its roots, writes Rose Doyle.

Tullamore, along with every town in the country, has changed. Changed quite dramatically since William Lumley and his wife Jane set up a grocers/bakery in the heart of the town 146 years ago - time enough for a town to change and a business to flourish, or go under.

"It's said," says Philip Lumley, a fourth generation Tullamore Lumley and the man who steered the business through some 50 years of its existence, "that with a family firm it's usually a story of from shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations, as in that's how long they last. Well, in our case and however it happened, we're on our fifth generation and doing well."

He gives a good account of how it happened. His son, Mark, looking after things today, tops his father's account with the fifth generation word on the way things are; and how they may just might be tomorrow.

Things began, Philip Lumley says, when his great-grandfather William Lumley, a Tullamore man and employee of Goodbody Ltd, fell ill. "It was 1861 and there was no social welfare or help in those days," he says, "so his wife Jane decided to open a family grocer shop to support the family. When William got well he took over."

The Lumleys weren't exactly blow-ins at the time. Tombstones in the local cemetery record Lumleys buried there in 1796. "There were a fair number of Lumley families in Tullamore," Philip says, "mostly tailors. Some were merchant tailors who sold suits, some the kind who made bespoke garments and looked down on the merchant fellows. My great-great grandfather was Joseph Lumley; his son William married Jane Hackett and it was they who set up the business."

Lumleys, in the beginning, sold pig meal and other such farm animal supplies as well as groceries. "They had a bakery too," Philip says, "and things prospered until the end of the 19th century. William died in 1900 and handed over to his son, Joseph Lumley.

Joseph is a story in himself. "He was the most flamboyant character in the family," Philip says, "a great man for attending political and other meetings, for getting involved. He was a friend of John Redmond and a spokesman for Home Rule and was disgusted with the rebellion of 1916, thought Ireland had thrown away the only chance of Home Rule. He washed his hands of the whole political scene after that. I remember him well; he was kindly and would give us grandchildren a few shillings when we visited."

Joseph Lumley married Henrietta Barnes, daughter of a Methodist minister, and drove their offspring quite hard, Philip also remembers. "He was very keen on doctors, and medicine. Of their five children, four boys and a girl, two of the boys became doctors and joined up in the first World War, another became a barrister and joined the colonial service. The girl became a physiotherapist and the fourth boy, my father Cecil, took over the business."

Joseph Lumley had done well by the business and Cecil, when he took over in 1920, inherited a thriving grocers/bakery.

"My father married a girl from the bank whose people came from Mullingar," Philip says, bringing his mother into the story, "her name was Muriel Brabazon and they had four children, I was the third. Cecil wasn't very interested in the business and didn't do a lot with it, letting it just tick over. My younger brother Denis trained as a baker and I was brought up as a grocer - the idea being that we'd have two specialists in the business." He allows a small chuckle. "Only it didn't work out so well. Denis and I weren't compatible."

When they joined the business in the 1950s, his brother Denis "more or less ran the bakery side on his own". He reflects, a moment, on the other problem of their time together. "We were almost too enterprising for the time," he says. "I set up a glace cherry and peel company in 1965, called it Melco Cherries and Melco Peel."

But in telling this he's getting ahead of himself, skipping the adventurous, restless bit in his own life when he "got fed up living here running a grocery shop and, in 1958, went off and drifted across Canada and the US for three years. I travelled on trains and hiked - but my mother kept writing to me, begging me to come back."

So he did, in 1961. Does he have regrets? "No. Not now. I'm quite happy with the way things have worked out since."

Denis Lumley took time out, too, in his case in South Africa, where he went with his family for five years. When Philip came back cash and carry was the coming thing so he "opened a cash and carry for grocers and got in a machine and began packing dried fruit, tapioca and rice for the trade."

This, too, was when he set up the cherry and peel business. "It was too adventurous," he insists again, "and a bit of a struggle with a lot of competition from new supermarkets; Mr Dunne of Dunnes Stores started out about the time, as well as the cash and carry places. I converted the shop into a small supermarket. Everything did reasonably well for a number of years but there was an awful lot of capital expended on expansion. We opened a cash and carry in Ballinasloe for a few years but the manager died and we closed it down. The packaging business went on until two years ago, when we sold it to a company in England."

A thought comes to him. "People give out about the banks but ours was the AIB and they helped us enormously over the years. At times when we were pretty low in the water the bank came and helped us." Denis Lumley, when he came home, "opened a good bakery in Dublin. He's retired but it's still going and his family run it."

Philip and his wife Victoria had four children, three boys and a girl, all of whom he used get to help with stocktaking, "which they hated". Daughter Jennifer became an accountant, son David an engineer and son Stephen, in San Francisco, "is drifting, doing what I did. Our son Mark, who is the eldest, wanted to take over. I didn't push him or anything," Philip is earnestly assuring on this, "he took over three years ago and employs about 20 people in Tullamore Cash and Carry, has the contracts for the local hospitals and shops, and does catering for schools and places like that.

"In the old days," Philip remembers, "everyone knew everyone in Tullamore. But it's grown enormously and on the whole things are better. The poverty in towns like Tullamore was considerable in my time. It used be customary for poor customers to come to the Lumley shops on Saturday nights and for my grandfather to give out unsold bread. My grandmother too used to help people in their houses. That sort of community closeness and helping out took the edge off poverty."

Mark Lumley, recounting his place in things, is full of enthusiastic commitment to the job in hand. "I was with Quinnsworth in Dublin for seven years, which was a very good grounding and very enjoyable as well. I'd always, from a very young age, wanted to be involved in the business. I used to earn £1 for cleaning floors when I was seven or eight. I came back to Tullamore in 1995, worked in the business and knew it well by the time I took over. Philip and I had talked about it a lot over the years."

He wouldn't trade life and work with JA Lumley & Sons for anything else, he says. He's got a son, James Adam, who is seven and wants to play rugby for Ireland. He swears he hasn't spoken to him yet about going into the business.