End of era as 77-year-old Mayo store closes

The closure of a landmark Erris business is set to leave a large void in the local community.

Following 77 years of trading, treasured Belmullet drapery shop, McAndew’s has announced it will be closing soon. A sale will run for the next few weeks at the Main Street store.

The business has been in the McAndrew family for close to eight decades and proprietor Liam McAndrew explained that it was a difficult decision to call it a day.

“When it’s right for the family to be in business they will be in business, and when it’s right for the family to stop, they will stop," Liam told the Western People. “While it’s an institution itself, it’s the family who have to make that decision."

Liam’s late father Billy established the shop in 1948, when he was just 23 years old. He and his wife Sal reared their family above the Main Street store.

“He opened here on December 15, 1948. He came from a shop, his father James McAndrew, known as ‘Jamesie The Shoe’, had a shoe shop across the road. He served his apprenticeship with O’Toole’s in Tourmakeady before he set up with help from his father,” explained Liam.

Liam fondly recalls the big wooden counter and remembers being able to see above it for the first time as a child.

“I was about eight when I was tall enough to see above the counter.” 

He and all his siblings worked and helped out in the shop over the years.

When Liam finished university, he worked for two years with Carraig Donn, before returning home in 1987 and working full time in the shop. He took over the running of the business in 2000.

Liam said the shop was at the heart of family life and that featured heavily in the way the business operated.

“We all still think of the shop as home. Everyone thinks that about where they grew up,” said Liam. “The shop was always about family and we were interested in other families and connected to them."

Liam said the family were hugely grateful to the loyalty and support shown by their customers over 77 years.

“It was that kind of loyalty and support that meant the shop lasted as long as it did,” he said, adding that the business has now reached a juncture post-Covid with the growth of online shopping having an impact.

“Shops like mine in are closed in towns a lot longer than before I made this decision,” said Liam. “The decision was always going to be hard and waiting another five or ten years wouldn’t make the decision any easier.

“I know from our Facebook page and people stopping me on the street that the town is sad to see the shop closing. But they would be sad in five  or ten years’ time as well. It was always going to be a moment in the family’s history, and in my life, and the life of the town in Belmullet."

The closure will leave Belmullet without a drapery shop and the business was also popular for haberdashery and sewing equipment.

Liam said he will miss the daily interaction he had with people from Erris and beyond.

“I will miss meeting the people. The thing about a small town and a shop like ours is that you are up close and personal with families, multi-generations of families. Somebody might be in buying a spool of thread and you will be asking them, ‘How is your father getting on?’ because I would have known the father. We have people coming in at time of funerals which are sad, of weddings which are happy occasions but can also be emotional occasions as well. Those emotions can play out in the shop as well. You would be close to families over the years. Losing that connection is something I will definitely miss.”