My research focuses on woollen cloth finishing in Ireland, a subject that has been largely neglected, with terms like 'fulling' and 'tentering' having been discarded from the vernacular. Finishing deserves to be returned to its rightful place alongside its partner processes, spinning, dyeing and weaving. I will explore the role played by finishing, focusing on C.H. Bates & Co. whose business archive I have inherited. For almost seventy years Bates & Co. operated a cloth finishing business at Kilmainham Mills, which is believed to be the last intact fulling mill, incorporating finishing processes, on the island of Ireland. In 2018 Dublin City Council purchased the Mill and in 2022 began restoration. In 2021 I was commissioned to research the Mill's history from 1904-1973 when it was operated by Charles H. Bates & Co. Finishing was perfected in Yorkshire. Ireland didn't benefit from early industrialization like Britain, with cottage industries like spinning, hand-weaving and fulling surviving there much longer. When Irish textiles were mechanised, they were influenced by Yorkshire practices. Unlike England or Scotland, which had textile training colleges in Huddersfield and Galashiels, Ireland lacked one. Skilled workers, knowledge and technology were imported from Britain. Finishing involves scouring, fulling or milling, tentering, raising and brushing, cropping and pressing, among other processes, which render woolen cloth soft, warm, weatherproof and resistant to further shrinking. Yet finishing has been scantily researched, perhaps due to its industrial nature in comparison to the techniques of spinning, dyeing and weaving, which continued to be practiced in cottages long after finishing had been mechanised. Weavers brought their cloth to finishing mills on which they were entirely dependent: woollen cloth is neither sellable nor wearable until it has been finished. Fulling has been traced to ancient Rome and Pompeii and is considered the first textile process to have been mechanised, with water-powered 'tuck' mills known from the twelfth century. Kilmainham Mills changed from fulling, to flour milling, and back to finishing in 1904 when purchased by Yorkshire finisher Charles H. Bates. My great-grandfather Harry Archer, another Yorkshire finisher, took ownership in 1911. Under their direction Bates & Co. thrived for seven decades as the only independent company in Ireland specializing in wool finishing. Precedents of Yorkshire men founding woollen mills in Ireland include Leeds man Obadiah Willans, who in 1812 established Hibernian Mills in Inchicore in Dublin, Huddersfield man Jeremiah Houghton, whose woollen mill in Celbridge, Co. Kildare was the largest in Ireland by c.1815; Clayton Woollen Mills, Navan, Co. Meath, founded in 1867 by brothers Frederick and John Clayton of Holme Top Mills in Horton, Yorkshire, and Tullamore Yarns in Co. Offaly, founded in 1937 as the first worsted spinning mill in Ireland, by Salts of Saltaire, Yorkshire.