Ever wondered how a scarf goes from an idea to something you wrap around your neck on a cold morning? Our guided tours take you behind the scenes, through the same journey McKernan itself has made.

It starts with our handloom, where it all began, long before machines came into the picture. From there we move to our Victorian Hattersley looms. Introduced around 1900, the Hattersley Domestic loom was a clever hybrid, worked entirely by foot and hand, yet fast and precise enough to rival a power loom. You will see how a loom is dressed and patterns like herringbone take shape, and the vertical warping mill in action, a cascade of colour as threads are prepared for the loom. We will explain why Irish wool is not suitable for our products, where our yarns come from, and how each piece is finished.

The looms are still very much at the heart of what we do, but we added knitting machines because they opened up a whole new world of design possibilities alongside the weaving. Today many of our scarves are made on modern Stoll machines that allow us to create detailed, intricate patterns that the looms alone could not achieve. Most visitors grew up watching a mother or grandmother knit and are amazed by what these electronic machines can do.

No two tours are quite the same. For textile and fashion people, we can go deeper into designing, stitches, structures, and the technical possibilities of our machines. Plenty of visitors, especially the men in the group, love the old machines and hearing how we keep them running. From a business point of view, it is also interesting how a small handweaving workshop has grown, one machine and one decision at a time, into a business employing 20 people and making around 30,000 pieces a year.

Whoever you are, whatever brought you here, there's time for questions and no need to rush. You'll walk away with a real understanding of how things are made, and the many hands and decisions behind every piece.