Centre - Environmental Living & Training - Sunday Tribune Article 14/3/10

Sunday Tribune Article – Raging Against The Machine (14/3/10)

Hammers, chisels, brushes and bare hands are the tools of their trades. They are the craftsmen and artisans that modern, mechanised Ireland has almost eradicated – but not quite. Michael Freeman meets heirs to ancient legacies, who are still thriving, and even creating new jobs. Photographs by Mark Condren

There was a time when each little town and village across Ireland would have had its own complement of skilled craftsmen. These artisans were the engine of society: the people who kept machines from breaking down, houses from collapsing, and local residents from going naked. They made repairs; built tools, bricks, and buttons; set things straight and occasionally even made them beautiful. A century and a half later, the closest many of us get to a carpenter is hearing 'We've Only Just Begun' on the radio. But there are still some old professions out there – holding on to their jobs, and giving rise to some new vocations. As Patrick Cowan, founder of Ireland's first and only school for chimney sweeps, points out: "You can't outsource a chimney."

Dry stone waller, Scariff, Co Clare, Bob Wilson

Founder member of the Centre for Environmental Living and Training (CELT), a body set up to promote and teach traditional skills and trades

"Some people just have it, some people don't and never will. I've seen a young, skinny 16-year-old girl come along, a farmer's daughter, she took to it straight away, no problem."

Learning the techniques doesn't take long. But it's practice then. You develop what's known as an 'eye' for the stone – so you see a gap, and you remember where the stone was that would fit it. Some people just have it, some people don't and never will. I've seen a young, skinny 16-year-old girl come along, a farmer's daughter, she took to it straight away, no problem. It was obviously in her blood. And yet older, strong fellas, who you'd think would be good at it, just can't see how the stones would fit.

There's different features all around the country depending on the type of stone. If you go to Galway, you'll see a lot of single stone walls. If you look at granite walls over in Wicklow, you'll see there's a definite pattern because the nature of granite is it's either in big pieces or a lot of small stuff. On the Burren, you'll often see techniques using vertical stones. On the Aran Islands, there are certain wall builders who would each have their own little style of building. And people recognise each other's walls. Just a slight different arrangement of the stones, and they'd all recognise each other's work.

I learnt from a professional dry stone waller in Scotland. That was, oh, about 20 years ago anyway. It's a bit of a hobby, a bit of part-time work now and then when a friend wants a wall built or something. And then there's teaching, being involved in CELT.

On the dry stone walling, there's plenty of work around. The demand is pretty broad really – often private, but also farms. In Ireland, lots of people have stone, or they know a farmer up the road who has stone. We've actually been getting quite a lot of ladies who are keen to have a go in their own garden and create some kind of stone feature, or build a stone seat – that type of thing. So there's demand out there.

There's definitely a revival of interest. With CELT, we run three big events each year and people come from all around the country, and even from overseas. People from all kinds of backgrounds. A bit of everybody, old and young. We had an English lord once.

People are reconnecting with nature, I think, in many ways. That's the other thing about dry stone walls – it fits in with nature. Animals can live in them, and plants and things. The ferns and mosses. Also if you get a sharp frost like we had this winter, cement mortar can crack – water can seep into small gaps and then it'll expand when it freezes, and the wall can fall down because of that.

Whereas building a dry stone wall creates a kind of natural drainage. And the wall will just move with any shift or give. If it's properly done, it's a very satisfying job, because you're constructing something that's going to be there hopefully for another two or three hundred years.

Blacksmith for over 60 years, Peter Collins

Works from a home forge near Mountshannon, Co Clare; he runs introductions for people interested in learning the trade

I've been a blacksmith all my life. I started at about 10 or 11, learning from my brother. I'm 74 now, and I'm still learning. My grandfather was a master carpenter; he was a brilliant man and, he said, a man who gets up in the morning and does a day's work and hasn't learnt anything is no bloody good to anybody.

The bulk of my stuff now would be making tools, traditional woodworking tools. I send them all over the place. To England, they've gone to Sweden, Norway, France. Only in a very small way though, you see – the last thing I want to do is get big. A lot of people say, "You'd want to get on the net." And I say, "Look, if I suddenly got an order for 20 drawknives, I'd probably head for the Shannon." Too old to be at that, I am.

Basically, you need a forge, you need an anvil, and an anvil stand, and a variety of hammers and tools. Everything from a light hammer up to... well, generally I'd use a 14-pound sledge. There's also a 28-pound sledge, which I wouldn't attempt to use anymore. That's for the really heavy work – and you want a young fella to swing that, believe me.

There's a lot of training and learning. A lot of skills. A lot of sore arses, believe me. My mentor had a three-foot steel ruler, which he never hesitated to use across my arse – bending me over an anvil if I did something wrong. You didn't need telling twice, put it that way. It hurt, and it hurt your dignity as well.

It's changed a lot. There was a time when you had to repair everything. Then we moved into a throwaway society. People didn't bother repairing things, and it was a bad 10 or 20 years for blacksmiths, believe me.

Now the way things have gone, we're repairing things again. Because the money isn't there like it was. They're coming back with a vengeance.

There's a lot of interest. There are new people coming in to the trade, oh God there are. I run my own workshops. I give them a pretty good lesson in how to make a forge without spending a lot of money all over the place. There's the odd one or two that pursue it, and they actually do get back in touch with me. I reckon, if out of a hundred students I can produce one blacksmith I'm doing well.

Every village had one or two blacksmiths, both in Ireland and England. Now, they're as rare as rocking horses. Because of the factory situation, things are mass produced. Which to my way of thinking doesn't make a better tool. But then I'm prejudiced. I love it. I wouldn't be doing blacksmithing at 74 years of age if I didn't. I love having the ability to turn a piece of pig-ignorant iron or steel into something that I consider to be rather beautiful.