TradeNames: In the 1950s, it sold hats by the dozen, in the 1960s, mohair suits. Now Murphy's menswear shop has suits, schoolwear and and dress suits for hire. Rose Doyle talks to the family behind a Cork institution

Tom Murphy's drapery and mens-wear on Cork's Patrick Street is as familiar to Corkonians as many of the city's grander buildings and monuments. Ask anyone and they'll tell you where it is, add without drawing breath that generations of their family shopped there, that their mothers still do, that it's where their fathers and brothers go for dress suits.

They've had time to get used to it; there's been a shop on the spot for upwards of 136 years, probably longer. Mostly they sold men's clothes; a notable exception sold musical instruments.

Today's menswear outlet, both outside and in and notwithstanding refurbishment, looks much as it must always have looked.

Compact and businesslike in the midst of the street's 21st century flurry, it has a red-painted frontage, name and enterprise boldly over the door and business is doing well on four floors.

Michael Murphy, son of the Tom who started the drapery and menswear there in 1938, is the main man in today's concern. He's ably abetted by his son Tom, one of seven children born to Michael and wife Mary and the one who's opted to go full-time into the business.

Things are thus assured for a third generation - and from the sound of things, for several more to come.

Getting the story of the shop together is easy. Family pride in the shop is huge and while Michael and Tom keep the jingle of commerce going, Mary Murphy and two of Michael's sisters, Nuala and Anne, take me to the nearby English Market and fill me in on its history.

Mary Murphy, a teacher until she married Michael, helps a lot in the shop and has done some research. What she's uncovered shows there was a shop at number 5 as far back as 1867. Owned by S Chabrel and called The French House, it was the place to go for "best fashionable hats" as well as the clerical kind. The latter had to be "made of the best materials, and thoroughly water-proof (sic)" as well as "durable, light and suitable to the climate".

In l883 number 58 was taken over by John O'Brien & Co, became the Cork Woollen & Hat Warehouse and the place to go for "west of England black and blue cloths" as well as for "celebrated Irish friezes" and "silk, felt and tweed hats in the New Shapes (sic)". The City of Cork Boot Manufacturing Company's boots were sold there too, with the Cork Arms stamped on each pair.

In 1907, the business went to one D Mullane who sold ladies corsets and baby clothes until 1921 when the Rosehill family moved in and opened a music warehouse. Mary inserts an anecdote at this point.

"Esther Rosehill, the daughter of the original owner, called to the shop about six months ago," she says. "She's in her nineties and came home from England with her son, wanting to get in touch with her roots. She was born and bred in the rooms over the shop and seeing it really brought back memories."

But that was this year. Back in 1938, when the Rosehills sold up and moved on, Tom Murphy from North Main Street and his wife to be, Annie Walsh from Aherla, got engaged and bought the lease to the shop on the same day. Tom, who was about 30 at the time and had served his apprenticeship in Heagartys in Castle Street as a draper's assistant, set himself up to sell menswear.

He and Annie married in 1939 and went on to have five children - Nuala, Jerry, Michael, Tom and Anne - all of whom were supported and seen safely through to adulthood by the shop.

Which is not the same as saying all was plain and easy sailing. "Everyone helped, coming into the shop after school, delivering parcels . . ." Anne says.

The youngest, she admits she was the least involved of all. Nuala, the first born, adds her memories.

Anne remembers her father selling only white shirts, with detachable collars, for 29/11d. Ties cost 7/6d.

The three women are fiercely protective of Michael, insistent that the shop would not be the thriving outlet it is - with a wide menswear range and dress hire business - but for him.

"We all got married out of the shop," Anne says, "and when our father, who had a heart condition and wasn't well, needed help it was Michael who moved in and eventually took over. Michael IS Tom Murphy."

Mary Murphy wholeheartedly agrees. "Tom was a character and Michael has taken after him as a character in his own right," she says. "People come to the shop because of Michael, for the craic, especially sports people."

Michael, joining us from the shop, is modestly dismissive of the plaudits. With wry humour, in anecdote after anecdote, he tells the story of the shop's last 40-odd years. He remembers everything, especially the importance of hats in the 1950s.

"We had a great hat business and every Saturday morning you'd have to go to Lyon & Co on South Main Street to collect them. You'd sell two to three dozen hats, the "Set Shape" for 19/11d and the "Fur Felt" for 25/-, the same hats as had been delivered from the shop in the l940s by messenger bike to Bishopstown and Douglas and all over. We had a timber floor then, and a office in the corner with a sacred heart picture and a lamp my mother insisted we always kept burning.

"I moved in to take over at 14; I'd no option. My older brother was destined for the priesthood and my other brother went on to be an engineer."

The lack of an option hasn't apparently bothered him; he is, as the women in his life assert, the one and true heir to Tom Murphy, menswear specialist.

He pays tribute to his mother. "God have mercy on her, she was a great help. When my father died (in l970) she put on her coat and went down to the shop and worked with me until she was in her eighties. My father was in hospital a lot but was coming and going to the shop always.

"He had some hard times in the shop in the early l950s when the polio epidemic hit and children were evacuated from the city and schools shut down. Magees of Donegal were very good to us at the time and I still buy from them."

Michael Murphy took over completely in 1960/1961, and the next decade saw him selling cheesecloth shirts and mohair suits "off the rack. Before that suits were made to measure. We started the dress hire in the 1960s, and to sell schoolwear in the late 1960s, a lucrative business. In the 1970s it was Levis and Wrangler jeans but we moved away from that in the late 1980s and more into suits, jackets and trousers. The dress hire really took off in the mid-1990s."

Tom Murphy's sporting clientele stretches from Christy Ring to Ronan O'Gara. Michael remembers Jack Lynch as a Cork TD in the early 1960s coming to buy Forest Hill shirts, and Christy Ring buying suits and dress suits. Ring and Lynch "were great friends of my father's, who used to play with Glen Rovers. They'd gather in the shop on Monday mornings to discuss sporting outcomes and results."

There's more money around than of old, Michael says, "and people are more demanding too. We're under pressure as well for car-parking." Mary helps in the shop "most of the time" and in true tradition their six offspring help out too.

Everyone's adamant that Tom Murphys will continue dealing in men's clothes at 58 Patrick Street for generations to come.