In a salvage yard in Co Westmeath this summer, Karin O’Flanagan had a flash of recognition. When she spotted a regency footscraper, with a design incorporating leaping dolphins and scallops, she knew she had to have it.
In her Georgian home on Mountjoy Square, O’Flanagan has plaster overdoors with a dolphin motif. She had them fitted nearly 10 years ago (the originals were long since gone), when she asked Edward Byrne, a specialist lime plasterer, to take imprints from another Georgian property on Beresford Place.
“So when I saw the footscraper, it was a perfect fit for Mountjoy Square,” she says.
Despite the painstaking work involved, Ireland’s appetite for period homes shows no sign of abating. Indeed, the Irish Georgian Society is due to host a traditional building skills weekend to advise amateur restorers. And RTE is scouring the country for interesting restoration projects for a new series, tentatively called Home Salvage.
“It will be a conventional makeover programme, but what is nice is there’s a rich world of architectural salvage people,” says Colm Crowley, the programme’s executive producer.
Salvage yards are an indispensable source of bricks, beams and fittings. There are four that are recognised as leaders in the field: Wilson’s, in Dromore, Co Down, Architectural Classics and Victorian Salvage, both in Dublin, and the Salvage Shop in Waterford city. All will feature in the RTE series.
“I got interested in salvage when I was living in the north of England about 15 years ago,” says Peter Carr, the programme’s producer. “I used to visit a huge old mill there that got a lot of its stuff from Ireland.
I returned there recently and they had changed to selling reproduction. I asked them why and they said that all the original English stuff is now going to Ireland. So I reckon it’s a Celtic tiger thing.”
O’Flanagan’s parents bought the Mountjoy Square house in 1978 from a holding group established by members of the Irish Georgian Society. They converted the derelict end-of-terrace house into a multi-occupancy property. O’Flanagan took the top floor as her home and 20 years later her parents sold the house to her.
“The multi-occupancy was done as sensitively as possible,” she says. “Everything is reversible. When I took over the building, all the structural stuff had been done, so I had the luxury of doing messy but fun jobs like cleaning the plaster. Seamus O’Hooker did most of that for me, and he did a wonderful job.”
Slates on the roof, pitch pine for the floors and granite windowsills have all been sourced through salvage yards and used to put the house back together.
“Thirty years ago there was a lot of fantastic pitch pine around, salvaged from old commercial buildings,” she says. “It was so beautiful we used every scrap — my brother used the remainder to make picture frames.
“Recently I bought a granite sill from Wilson’s. There were three concrete sills on the front and we replaced them with new granite sills from Stone Developments in Enniskerry. But salvage has the right texture — it’s aged and looks just like all the others in situ. I was lucky on the day, it turned out he had the one — it was £120 and I stuck it into my car and drove it home.”
While salvage yards can offer some reasonable finds, searching for the perfect fit can be time-consuming, and depends on luck. Increasingly, however, people aren’t prepared to wait.
On Gloucester Street South in Dublin, father and son Niall and Mark McDonagh run two separate businesses, both trading in salvage-related goods.
“The market is more discerning now: they want salvage, but they want it perfect — and there’s no such thing,” says Mark McDonagh of the Victorian Salvage and Joinery Company. “So we find ourselves making things they can’t find.
“Our joinery business has quadrupled while the salvage end has reduced. People often want a period piece in a modern standard size, and you just can’t get that.”
Niall runs Architectural Classics. “In the old days you might buy an old bath, then you’d get an enameller to restore it and then get a plumber to fit it,” he says. “Now everything is restored for you — we’re in the business of instant gratification.”
It’s not just people with period properties who are using salvage yards: home design tastes are increasingly eclectic.
“People are mixing old and new a lot,” says McDonagh. “You also have new regulations — certain lights can’t be used in bathrooms and kitchens because of the high vapour content. And people are going for a contemporary style of lighting against ‘my granny had one of those’.
“Advertising and interior magazines play a big part in what people want. Everything is bright and airy, so people are avoiding big dark pieces of furniture — they want to open rooms up, not bring them down.”
Although there is increased interest in restoring period properties, Emmeline Henderson, the conservation research manager at the Irish Georgian Society, says there is still cause for concern.
“The biggest threat to period properties is not overnight demolition any more,” she says. “It’s actually home improvements which are incrementally eroding the character of a property. That’s why we are hosting this weekend about traditional building skills, along with Dublin city council.”
Henderson notes that homeowners can benefit from the expense incurred in restoring their homes properly.
“It’s money well spent, and not just for the common good,” she says. “Having all the original period features is a real selling point. Agents will often point out if the house has original sash windows or fireplaces. Give these houses a little TLC and they’ll last another 100 years — at the end of the day, home- owners will get a return.”
But with a house stripped of all its former glory, how can restorers gauge if they are doing the right thing? “If you want to restore your home with historical accuracy, the best thing is to look at properties in your area,” says Henderson. “Another good source is the Irish Architectural Archive.
Even a picture of your street as recent as 1985 can give you a lot of information.”
Nevertheless, Henderson is reluctant to endorse the use of salvage yards. “This is a thorny issue,” she says. “In one way, it’s great to find new homes for an aspect of a building. But there’s the whole issue of provenance which is slightly problematic.”
While craftspeople can create new items based on traditional techniques, many restorers are besotted by the lure of the original. While there are telltale signs that will give away an item’s age — layers of paint on a door, for example — most browsers of salvage yards must rely on experience and learnt knowledge.
O’Flanagan was initially delighted with her footscraper, but has since had a shadow cast over it: a similar piece has cropped up in a new catalogue.
“Something so similar makes me suspicious the one I bought isn’t an original,” says O’Flanagan. “But it was plugged into a piece of granite with lead, so hopefully it was.”
The Irish Georgian Society hosts the Traditional Building Skills Exhibition on October 14 and 15, at The Red Stables, St Anne’s Park, Raheny, Dublin 5, www.igs.ie, 01 676 7053
