Donegal tweed manufactured for centuries it took on its modern form in the 1880s, largely due to the pioneering work of English philanthropist Alice Rowland Hart. While the weavers in County Donegal produce a number of different tweed fabrics, including herringbone and check patterns, the area is best known for a plain-weave cloth of differently-coloured warp and weft, with small pieces of yarn in various colours woven in at irregular intervals to produce a heathered effect. Such fabric is often labelled as "donegal" (with a lowercase "d") regardless of its provenance. Along with Harris Tweed manufactured in the Scottish Highlands, Donegal is
Lewis and Harris uninhabited, are islands close to the shore of Harris. On the map to the right of this page, the islands of North Uist, Benbecula and South Uist are coloured red (the thinner red strip to the south) as if they were part of Lewis/Harris - the red strip shows the entire Western Isles, or Outer Hebrides. Lewis/Harris are actually one island, which causes confusion for many at first acquaintance, Harris being the portion of land just south of Tarbert where the sea comes in somewhat, but there is still a continuous land joint between Lewis (to the North) and Harris