Kildare saddle maker lays down tools after 51 years

It was a bittersweet moment when Benny Clifford laid down his leatherworking tools on the workbench at Berney Bros Saddlers in Kilcullen last Thursday. It was the last time he would do so — he retired that day after an amazing 51 years with the famous Kilcullen business. More than five decades, he says, which 'just flew by'.

When he took a job with Berney Bros, straight from school in the early 1970s, Benny also followed a long-standing family connection with the business. "My mother's father and uncle worked here with the old boss, Thomas's grandfather," he told the Kildare Nationalist. "

My brother Dec worked here, and my cousins Liam and Ger. People sometimes laughed and asked, Is it Berney Saddlers or Clifford Saddlers?"

Benny remembers many of the biggest names in the Irish racing industry visiting the workshop to discuss their needs, especially those from the 1970s. "There was TP Burns, Con Collins, Francis Flood, Mick Connolly and Mick O'Toole. Paddy Mullins, too, and John Oxx and his father. They'd all be coming through to talk to Jim Berney out the back, where he had a workshop doing blankets and collars."

When he started, Benny wouldn't have looked much into the future and how long he might be working there. But it was local, permanent, and he built up his competence to be a full craftsman in saddle-making under the expert tutelage of the Berney family, itself five generations on from its founding by Peter Berney. "The years I've been here have just flown by," Benny says. "That happens when you're doing something you like, and with people you like. All the lads here have been brilliant, and I couldn't have worked for better bosses, Jim and Tom, and now the younger lads."

While much of the mass-market saddle-making around the world is now done by machine, handmade saddles and related items used in the equine industry remain key to the continuing success of the 145-year-old Berney Bros operation. In addition to their customer base in Ireland, the saddles produced by Benny Clifford and his colleagues are prized in many other countries, including Britain, Germany, America, Canada, Switzerland, Japan, China, France, Denmark, Holland, Australia, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, and Dubai. "There aren't many going into the handcrafted saddle business now," Benny muses, ticking off a number of those who were in it when he started, now no longer in the trade.

Benny has been easing his way into retirement, working three days a week for a while. He hasn't given much thought to how he'll spend his new spare time — "It'll be a change, like the old saying about getting out of prison and not knowing what to do," he laughs. But he and his wife Bernie enjoy walking and travelling, and they do much of that in the Killarney area.

Where, no doubt, if they encounter somebody on horseback, by force of habit, Brendan looks to see the quality of the saddle and whether it is one of the tens of thousands that have come out of the famous Kilcullen workshop, which he has had a hand in making.