A semi-draped figure of a woman lies on a bed of cement in a fascinating back yard, just a stone’s throw from the War Memorial Gardens. In Edwin Lutyens’s elegant neoclassical design, the views are of sweeping stone steps, colonnades and a reflecting pool, but this nymph is surrounded by bits of roof tiles, haphazard cap stones and a few random planters. Nearby a half-collapsed barrel sauna is tethered to a trailer.
“That’s one of my favourites,” says Paul Thomas, manager of Mac’s Warehouse in Islandbridge, Dublin’s oldest family-run salvage yard.
“The lad that owned it drove under a low bridge. I bought it off the insurance crowd,” he says with a wry smile. I have wandered in, past a pair of noble-looking plaster dogs, what appears to be an armless Greek philosopher, and innumerable urinals. I pause at a table of neon-bright garden gnomes. A few steps further brings me to a flock of Guinness toucans, fronting a trio of Easter Island-esque stone heads, like an avian guard of honour.
“We get all sorts,” Thomas says with cheerful understatement. “Come with me,” he beckons. We pass under a large stained glass dome: “Pub in Clondalkin,” he says. The Dubliner is both irreverent and serious about what he does, and has an encyclopaedic knowledge of his inventory.
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Down the back there are rows and rows of stacked-up doors. We stop at one numbered 406, which is the colour of honey gold. “These are solid oak, from the Clarence Hotel. We got 300 of them. Basically, we hate to see stuff going to landfill. We’re happier to see people using it. These would have cost around €1,000. We’re selling them for €80.” I think of all the illustrious guests – and their antics – these doors may have once guarded. “Solid oak,” Thomas repeats, wonderingly. “They’d be good for external as well.” I start to regret having already bought the doors for my own house project.
Not in the market for a storied door? There are Confession boxes: “They’re great sellers, handy for a back bar”; and a jukebox from a spot where Madonna and Shakespears Sister were clearly local favourites. In a set of side rooms are hooks, handles, mirrors and lanterns. Upstairs are shop dummies, chairs and all manner of intriguing items, if only I had room for them. Two pitch pine tables run to 18ft each.
On a more practical level, there are bricks, paving stones, huge slabs of granite, windows, flooring and decking – all salvaged. These days, Mac’s is owned by Greg and Ed McGarry, grandsons of Charles McGovern, who started out selling scrap metal and bits of fabric from his horse and cart in the 1940s.
“I fell into it when I was 23,” says Greg, who began his working life as a welder. His parents had bought the business back from the liquidators in the 1980s after it had gone bust. Things come from pub and hotel renovations, estate sales and house clearances.
“You’re always getting little presents when you clear out a place,” says Greg. “There will be something you see, something you want to bring home.” When we speak, he has just come from Dún Laoghaire, “taking asunder the Lighthouse Bar [which closed during the summer]. Every day is different. If I’m scouting around, I might go to France with a truck. They have massive flea markets, there’s one in Le Mans once a month, and another in Chartres.”
While fashions in interiors change over the years, things tend to come full circle, especially in the world of salvage. “It’s strange,” says Thomas. “You could sell one cast-iron fireplace in eight months, and then 40 in just one month.” And while there are plenty of bargains to be had, not every customer is here for the cheaper option. “There’s a lot of money out there,” says Thomas. “I have done very well on fireplaces,” says Greg.
“I was out at a house in Foxrock. It had been built in the 1980s, and no one gave it much merit – from a period point of view – but whoever had built it had put in superior fireplaces. And because the house was 1980s, no one was looking at them. I bought two fireplaces, an Aga, a Stanley and two paintings for €3,000 ... ” He pauses for his finale: “And I sold the two fireplaces for €30,000. That was 20 years ago. They knocked down the house and built four on the same site. We don’t get those things all the time, unfortunately.”
Fireplaces remain one of the bigger-ticket items at Mac’s. “There’s a white marble fireplace we have for €12,000-€15,000. If you have a house good enough to put that in, you’re not worrying about money.” Insurance has changed things, Thomas says. “We can’t go into the building sites any more. Once we’d have people in, pulling out the floors and doors. Now the builder brings things to you.”
Thomas came into the business in the 1990s, when his brother, who had been working for Mac’s, left. Back then the area hosted a trove of similar spots: a motor factory where you could sift through parts to fix your car or bike; a smattering of local shops; and “The Black and Amber, as Dillon’s pub was called,” says Thomas. “We’re the last man standing.”
Now, the warehouse is overlooked by apartments, the parking more congested. “We’re not going to complain; they are our neighbours,” says Thomas. “You have to be good to your neighbours, and to your customers. If someone is coming in just for four bricks, I’ll give them for free. You have to be nice to people.” What if they keep coming back for four more free bricks at a time? “I’d kick them out, of course.”
Mac’s has long been an open secret in the world of theatre, with set designers and production managers coming in, truffling for gold. “Yeah,” says Thomas, ruefully. “They come in with a sad face on them. They don’t have much money, so I have to lend them stuff. If you’re good to people, it comes back tenfold. Maybe when they’re rich and famous, they’ll remember me.”
We have stopped at a table covered with pots of plants. “They were from a set in RTÉ; they were going in the bin. Can you believe it?” Above us is a huge totem pole: “It’s hollow. Plaster. It’s not real. From another pub.” There is a gorgeous set of curved stained-glass windows: “They’re hundreds of years old. They came out of a house in Wicklow.” I am also intrigued by a carved cabinet with a gold circle detail that looks like something furniture makers Zelouf & Bell might have dreamed up, or perhaps may have been inspired by wood sculptor Emmet Kane. You just wouldn’t know with Mac’s. “I bought that off a girl in Sutton. It was an old bar. She was taking it out of her house.”
As we talk, there is a constant stream of delivery drivers, dropping off and picking up; builders asking for specific things, and browsers on the hunt for a find. A small girl can’t tear herself away from the stone dogs. “Things come and go all the time. If we don’t have it this morning, we might have it in the afternoon. Maybe Mac’s is the last piece of land to slow up the development of Islandbridge,” Thomas says. “But I don’t think we’ll be going anywhere soon.”
