Kinsale cloak

What it is

The Kinsale cloak is a long hooded cloak of heavy woollen cloth, made and worn by women in Kinsale and the surrounding parts of West Cork. Irish speakers call it fallaing Chionn tSáile. It is the last of Ireland's cloak styles, and it belongs to a family of wraps that people across Europe have worn since the Bronze Age. Older Irish cloaks were used by men and women alike. The garment is lined and trimmed, closed at the throat, and it covers the wearer from the shoulders to below the knees. Writers of the nineteenth century liked how the cloth folded and how the hood could be pulled forward against sun, rain and wind.

Older Irish cloaks

For centuries before the Kinsale cloak, Irish people wore a rectangular wrap called a brat, with four corners. Tools from the late Bronze Age, found at Armoy in County Antrim and reported in 1904, had been wrapped in a brat sewn from two pieces of wool, which suggests such cloaks were in use around 750 BC. By roughly 600 AD the shape had become cape-like, fitted at the shoulders and hanging below the knee, as shown in the Book of Durrow. In the sixteenth century, woollen weatherproof cloaks spread, and English law under Henry VIII tried to stop people wearing them. Mr and Mrs S. C. Hall, writers of the nineteenth century, liked the way the cloth draped and folded.

Colour and change

Red was the popular colour at the start of the nineteenth century, then lost favour. One explanation, given by Thomas Crofton Croker, was that people confused red cloaks with the red coats of English soldiers after the 1798 rebellion; the cost of red dye may also have mattered, since poorer women wore grey or undyed cloth. Surveys by the Dublin Society found red cloaks still common in Sligo, Leitrim, Longford, Cork, Meath and Connacht in the early 1800s, while blue, grey and black appeared elsewhere. After the Famine of 1847 the cloak faded from most of Ireland and stayed on in the west, which is how the Kinsale name arose.

Making and makers

Each cloak was sewn by hand with a long needle. One cloak needed four yards of black melton, a heavy woollen cloth with a raised pile, along with satin lining, jet and beaded braid. A single hook and eye fastened it at the neck. The hood was fuller than the body of the cloak, gathered behind the neck, lined in satin and finished with a bow. Two of the best-known makers were Ellen Kirby of Ballinspittle, near Kinsale, born in 1834, and her daughter Mary. Ellen worked from Fisher Street in Kinsale and travelled by train to Bandon and Clonakilty for orders and measurements. Mary carried on until she died in 1940.

Today

Kinsale cloaks are no longer worn on Irish streets. One is kept in a Dublin museum, in a display about Irish dress called "The Way We Wore". The design still draws fashion designers, some of whom have made evening cloaks in a similar style. Most often the Kinsale-style cloak now appears at historical reenactments and Renaissance fairs outside Ireland, helped along by a sewing pattern that home sewers use.

How Kinsale cloak is kept

A woman put the cloak over her other clothes and closed it with one hook and eye at the neck. The hood could be raised against weather or, in the Kinsale version, thrown back; in West Cork generally it was never fully pushed down. Long hand slits sat under mock pockets, so the hands could come through while the cloth still covered the arms. A flat jet collar sat inside the hood, trimmed with beaded braid, and the top of the hood carried a satin bow. Cloaks passed from mother to daughter, most often as a wedding gift.

When and where

The hooded cloak was ordinary outdoor wear for Irish women through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Kinsale and West Cork style belongs to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, after the Famine of 1847 left it the main cloak still in use. It is no longer seen on Irish streets today.

Cloaks of this kind were worn across Ireland, and the hooded version was strongest in the west. Red cloaks were noted in Cork and blue ones in Waterford; red held on longest in Sligo, Leitrim, Longford, Meath, Cork and Connacht in the early 1800s. By the twentieth century only West Cork, and Kinsale with it, kept the style.

What Kinsale cloak means

For the women who wore it, the cloak was warmth and cover in wet, windy weather, and its hood could hide the face from rain or sun. In the sixteenth century it was viewed with suspicion: it kept rebel fighters warm in the hills, and one English poet described it as a good cloak for a thief. In the twentieth century it meant something quieter, a garment a mother gave her daughter at marriage and that was passed down.

Questions people ask about Kinsale cloak

See also

Marriage proposalA ritual where one partner asks another to marry them, marking the start of engagement.Saint Stephen's DayA Christian feast day celebrating the first martyr with feasts, rides and folk customs.HandfastingA couple's promise made with joined or bound hands, kept from betrothal to weddingTelling the beesA Western European custom of informing honeybees about major household events like deaths and weddings.

Good reading and sources

• Kinsale cloak on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-11.