Located on Hill Street, and renowned as Newry’s first ‘supermarket’, Quinn’s grocery store was founded by John Quinn who was born in 1865 in Attical, near Kilkeel. He later moved to Liverpool and worked in a grocery shop there for a number of years where he learned the techniques of the grocery trade before returning home with his wife and children in 1909 to open his first shop in Newry.
John Quinn’s most well-known shop was the Milestone building in Hill Street, Newry. It had a long history of being a grocery store, with Arthur and James McCann establishing an extensive grocers’ business there in the 1870s. It had previously been a wine merchant’s store. He named the shop after a milestone on the building which indicated that it was 50 miles (old Irish miles) to Dublin, Dundalk 10 miles and Banbridge 10 miles.
Quinn introduced several grocery innovations to Newry, like the first slicing machine for bacon and in 1910 he introduced tomatoes to his store, a great delicacy at that the time.
He built his business up over the years, opening a number of other shops in towns and cities, such as Main Street, Newcastle; Newry Street, Kilkeel; Crumlin Road and Castle Street, Belfast; English Street, Armagh (also called The Milestone); Church Street, Warrenpoint; Market Street Lurgan; Carlingford and several locations in Dublin.
John Quinn died in 1955, and by that stage there were some twenty-seven people employed in Newry, between Quinn’s The Milestone and the butchery factory on the opposite side of O’Hagan Street. Since the late 1970s, and until quite recently, Dunnes Stores operated the shop as a supermarket.
Quinn’s son, Dr. Padraig Quinn, a veteran of the War of Independence, was co-founder with Major Gerald Reside, of the Old Newry Society. Other well-known members of the extended Quinn family included Ruairi Quinn, former leader of the Irish Labour Party and Feargal Quinn, head of the Superquin chain.
A few years ago, an extensive collection of memorabilia relating to local shops was donated to the Museum, much of it relating to Quinn’s The Milestone. This is currently being catalogued and a small selection illustrate this article.
Newry and Mourne Museum is temporarily closed.
by Noreen Cunningham
