Concern has been expressed that the contribution made by a Co Waterford town to Ireland's economic history is in danger of being forgotten.
There are few signs today that the quiet town of Portlaw was once a major centre of industrial activity.
Now with a population of 1,500 and with no major enterprise, it is hard to visualise the town as it was 150 years ago, with nearly 5,000 inhabitants and a cotton mill employing 1,600 men, women and children.
The boom times for Portlaw coincided with the Famine, and it was one of the few towns in Ireland to record an increase in population during that period.
Tom Hunt, the author of a new book on the town which was published last week, says it has a unique heritage which deserves to be acknowledged. Its cotton mill was built on a greenfield site in the early 19th century, and the town was built to meet the needs of the factory.
But the Malcolmsons, the Quaker family behind the project, did not stop there. They also put in place a sophisticated social structure with an emphasis on healthcare and educational facilities. The town had five schools in the 1830s.
While Mr Hunt is anxious that this story not go unrecorded, another battle is taking place to preserve the physical infrastructure which links the Portlaw of today to the bustling town of the past.
The cotton mill and the nearby Mayfield House, where the Malcolmsons lived, still stand, but both have been derelict since the mid-1980s when Portlaw lost its last major industry, the Irish Leathers tannery plant which had been established on the old cotton factory site.
To the extreme disappointment of locals, the site was not included in the locations recently given tax-incentive status under the town renewal scheme. Other parts of Portlaw did qualify, but the independent adjudicators felt the cotton mill site was too far from the town centre and the project would be too expensive.
A local Fine Gael councillor, Paudie Coffey, claims the decision is "a nonsense" given that the site was the original town centre. While there is no appeal mechanism, Waterford County Council supports the view of locals and has asked the Department of the Environment to have the application reviewed.
Mr Coffey says a tax incentive is necessary to attract investors to restore the buildings which form a vital part of the town's heritage. If this doesn't happen, "it will be too late in two or three years".
About 250 people turned out on Friday night at the local GAA hall for the publication of Mr Hunt's book, which is the first published academic study of the town and its cotton factory. It examines the development of the town from 1825 including its rebuilding by the Malcolmsons in the 1860s when the family was at the height of its industrial power.
The town built then remains intact, and its houses are still inhabited. The second section of the book examines the social world of 19th-century Portlaw, focusing on the health and welfare provisions put in place by the Malcolmsons. There is also new material on the activities of the Mayfield Literary Society and the Mayfield Philharmonic Society.
Mr Hunt, a native of Clonea, Carrick-on-Suir, which is Portlaw's neighbouring parish, is a schoolteacher now living in Mullingar, Co Westmeath. His research for the book began 2 1/2 years ago.