Stonemasonry proves a solid business down the centuries

TRADE NAMESA Glasnevin stonemasons has proved a durable business for the best part of 200 years, writes Rose Doyle

IT'S NOT FOR nothing wags have long called Glasnevin "the dead centre" of Dublin.

And it's not for nothing that Farrell & Son set up the Glasnevin Marble Works in the locality in 1834 either.

The city's historic cemetery has been core to the area, attracting work as well as funerals and literary references to Glasnevin Cemetery since it was set up in 1832. In 1834, when it was two years old, one John Farrell combined a family sculpting tradition with the business opportunity offered by the new cemetery and set up a marble works.

Farrell & Son, a short trot from the old cemetery entrance when it opened and a short trot from today's main entrance on the Finglas Road, is the oldest monumental firm in Dublin. There's a large, limestone Celtic cross against a wall in the yard. This, in 1910, was the company mascot.

Proprietor of today's marble works is Peter Brennan, who took over from his father Jack Brennan.

"I know it well," he says of the business, with undue modesty. A man given to humour, straight talking and not a little irony he's got the early historical evidence on the yard to hand. The rest, for 30 years now, he's lived through.

The Farrells weren't just any old family. The John Farrell who set up the company belonged to a family which produced several sculptors.

The most notable was James Farrell RHA whose work can be found in Dublin churches from Rathmines to Gardiner Street to Blackrock.

John Farrell, more the businessman and righteous with it, reveals himself in a letter he wrote to the Rev Thomas Canon Grimley in 1857. Reporting on the progress of "three Deaf Mute Boys" sent by Grimley to work in the marble works, John Farrell assures "they are all strictly moral and well disposed, and amuse each other innocently in their leisure hours. They obey every sign that my son or I make to them most cheerfully; they shew no sign of that sulk, which poor uneducated mutes invariably manifest, and which is so difficult to break down when they grow up in ignorance."

The works remained in Farrell hands until 1882 when the Hynes family took over. This was also when the Brennan family's first link with the company was established.

"My grand-aunt married Charlie Hynes," Peter explains, "and took over when he died. She was a formidable businesswoman, an amazing lady. The staff never put a foot astray when Annie was around - nor smiled. She was noted for saying 'take that grin off your face, this is no place for levity' - and she meant it. She died in 1959."

But the company had been building history and a reputation long before Annie Hyne's reign. Peter Hynes had worked for the firm as a sculptor before becoming manager and, eventually, owner. When he took over the lease in 1881 it was signed by Peter Farrell, last of the original family to run things. Alexander Taylor, Thomas Crampton and Benjamin Banks also signed. A "platform and bust" made for R H Saden Smyth Esq of Rathgar in 1882 and erected on a tomb in Rathfarnham cost £20. 17s.6d.

By 1888 things were going well enough for Peter Hynes to be one of the original exporters to the Irish Exhibition in Olympia London and to have a season ticket. Of oval-shaped red leather, ticket number 6030 cost one guinea and has a couple of nifty, embossed shamrocks.

Peter Hyne's obituary gives testament to a life well lived, recounting how he "made the company known not only all over Ireland but outside Ireland also, especially in America. He erected some of the most important monuments in this country, spent some years in the United States and fought in Meagher's Irish Brigade during the Civil War for his service in which he had several medals. When he came back to Ireland he joined the Fenian Brotherhood. He was most competent in the designing and execution of artistic sculptural work. A good Irishman, charitable almost to a fault, a wit, humorist, a raconteur of the first water, and a citizen of the very finest type."

Peter Hynes also left behind "five or six" offspring to "carry on the business".

Charlie Hynes was one of these, and the redoubtable Annie became his wife. "She ran the business from the early 1940s," Peter Brennan says, "and died in 1959. But before then she'd implored my father Jack Brennan, who was an accountant in Craig Gardner at the time, to take over the business. He didn't really want to, but did."

It would be a lifetime commitment. "He was still involved in 2003 when he went up above," his son says. "He was 83."

Peter, the youngest of Jack and Ena (nee Bannister) Brennan's four children (the others are David, John and Ann) was the one to come into the business. "I studied marketing, for my sins," he says, "and was always aware of and helping out in the business growing up. It wasn't at all depressing, we were dealing with people well after the event, when the tears had dried up."

He's seen styles change in his 30 years in Farrell & Son. "Celtic crosses hewn out of rough granite stone quarried in the Dublin mountains were popular in the 1950s. Polished granite became popular in the 1960s. Still is. Things began to change then and stones started to get smaller. Sandblasting came in and, as distinct from it being carved, a template was sandblasted onto the stone."

He swears that the term "stone mad" comes from the ways of quarrymen in the mountains, says there was no interest in technology among craftsmen and that "the old ways died hard!"

The 1980s, he says, were "busy enough. You have to bury someone but a stone can be long-fingered and we'd plenty of time to work on stones. Polished black granite was big then. We made some here but it started coming from China in the mid-1990s.

"Nearly everything comes from China now; they've a far greater range of stone and it's much cheaper than making up stone here. All the cobbles and pavings going in around Dublin are Chinese. We still do some of our own sculpting but the majority is imported."

Stone sculptor employees in the past would have spent a working lifetime in Farrell & Son. "Once they came here they never went anywhere else, nor did their fathers before them. The business has changed and people work far more as a team now, everyone does everything. Glasnevin is still our main port of call but we're in cemeteries everywhere."

The fashion today is for polished granite in different colours - and shapes. "It ranges from love hearts to footballs to teddy bears and angels. Bronze solar lamps which flash on the grave when they catch the sun are popular too - they come from Italy. People are always looking for something different to put on graves. What I suggest to people putting up a stone is to go for something which would mean something to the person in the grave."

Asked what he'll be having himself he laughs and is merrily reassuring: "I couldn't give two hoots!"

Farrell & Son has a staff of four. Tom Vaughan is the company's "boy" to Peter Brennan's "dogsbody" - their terms.

Busy at the computerised end of things, Tom (except for a break of a few years) has been with the company since 1965; it's still a place where employees tend to hang around.

Peter Brennan's wife Helen is an accountant and not involved in the business and their children are young. Hugo is 12 and Max nine and "though they're not considering work or careers yet I doubt they'll come into the business", Peter says. Maybe not but their Dad, without a doubt, is good for time to come.