Our first newspaper advertisement, November 1964. The Connaught Telegraph is Ireland’s oldest provincial newspaper in continuous circulation.
In November 1964, a short notice ran in the Connaught Telegraph announcing that McDermott’s of Spencer Street would be selling furniture.
It was not a grand opening. There was no ribbon. It was a family who already ran a shop deciding to sell something new in it, and putting a small ad in the local paper to say so.
Sixty-two years later we are still on the same street, still family-run, and the third generation is now working in the business. This is how that happened.
Before the furniture, there were toys
We have been trading on Spencer Street since the early 1900s, but not in furniture. McDermott’s was a toy and grocery shop.
If you grew up in Castlebar in the middle of the last century, there is a fair chance you were in our shop long before you ever bought a sofa from us. The furniture arrived in 1964 and gradually took over. The address never moved.
That is the part we are quietly proud of. Plenty of businesses last 60 years. Not many last 60 years on the same street.
Michael and Eileen McDermott inside the front door of our Spencer Street shop.
Michael and Eileen
Michael McDermott, shaped most of what this business still is.
He was hands-on in a way that would be unusual now. He knew customers by name, and their parent’s names. He took the view that how you treated someone mattered more than what you sold them, and that if you looked after someone properly they would come back in twenty years with their own children.
He was right, as it turns out. We still serve families where their grandparents were customers.
Michael gave a great deal to the town as well as to the shop. He served as President of the Castlebar Chamber of Commerce. He was one of the organisers of the Castlebar International Song Contest, which brought performers and crowds to Mayo throughout the 70s and 80s. And he was part of the group that got Castlebar’s first shopping festival off the ground.
Eileen was alongside him throughout. Between them they set the tone that the business still runs on.
The same doorway, forty years apart
The shop front has changed more than once, but the street has not
Across the road, the old stone buildings have been restored and now hold things that would have baffled a customerin 1964: Ireland’s only standalone XOOON concept store, our SleepSpa mattress department, Ireland’s largest collection of Fama sofas and chairs, our garden furniture department and outlet store.
Michael McDermott, President Castlebar Chamber of Commerce, at the International Song Contest with Compere Brendan Balfe, and Frank Durcan, Chairman Castlebar Urban District Council.
Michael McDermott (right) with Castlebar International Song Contest Director John McHale (centre) and sponsors Cathal Duffy, Peter Lang and Bob Howick.
Sixty years celebrations, November 2024
Sixty years, and then a second home
In November 2024 we marked sixty years of selling furniture. There was a party, and a great many familiar faces came through the door, including people who had bought their first bed from us decades earlier.
The following year we did something we had talked about for a long time and opened a second showroom, on Station Road in Ennis, in the old Madden’s building.
Ennis is a long way from Castlebar. But it is the same business, run the same way, with the same rule about not following customers around the shop.
McDermott’s showroom on Station Road, Ennis.
Three generations in
Michael and Eileen’s children, Mícheál and Michelle, have run the business for decades now, and the third generation of the family has since joined them.
That matters for a practical reason as well as a sentimental one. When the people who own the shop are the people standing in it, they carry the consequences of every decision. If we sell you the wrong sofa, we are the ones who hear about it, and we are still here in 10 years when you come back.
What has not changed
Three things have survived sixty-two years and will probably survive the next sixty.
Nobody follows you around the shop. Our staff will help when you want help and leave you be when you don’t. There is no commission-driven hovering, and there never has been.
Our own vans, our own crews. The people who deliver and assemble your furniture work for us, not for a haulage contractor. That is a deliberate choice and it is the reason deliveries generally go the way they are supposed to.
The coffee is free. In both showrooms. Some traditions are worth keeping.
Come and see us
If you have been in before, you will know where we are. If you haven’t, we are on Spencer Street in Castlebar and Station Road in Ennis, and there is free parking at both.
You are welcome whether you are buying something or just having a look around. That was the arrangement in 1964 and we have not seen a reason to change it.
McDermott’s Furniture & Interiors · Family Run Since 1964
Two Showrooms, One Family
We are still on Spencer Street, and now on Station Road in Ennis as well. Call in whether you are buying something or just having a look around. That was the arrangement in 1964 and we have not seen a reason to change it.
Castlebar: 094 90 22500 ·
Ennis: 065 68 66233 ·
sales@mcdermotts.ie
Find Us
Gift Cards
Track My Order