TradeNames: Weirs, despite a brief period as a supermarket, has been a stalwart of life on Baggot Street, writes Rose Doyle

The story of how Weirs, the legendary Baggot Street hardware/ironmongery, was returned in the late 20th century to its late 19th century beginnings is, in many ways, the story of two Irish companies. Weirs is one of them. Curust Industries is the other.

Weirs, these days , is a 21st century version of the ironmongers which began life in Upper Baggot Street in 1885. Curust Industries is the Irish company set up in 1952 which, as sole-producer of pre-packaged paint sundries in the country, became a leading supplier of solvents and which, these days, owns Weirs.

Roland Brocklesby, whose father helped set up Curust 54 years ago, tells the story of the "continuity between the old Weirs and the new Weirs" and, in passing, something of the story of Curust Holdings.

Norah Walsh fills in the gaps as we go along. Wryly humourous, she manages things on the Weir shop floor, knows Baggot Street like the back of her hand and has seen a change or two come and go in the last 30 odd years.

"I was brought up in Rathmines and started working in Baggot Street in 1966. My grandmother used come here in the 1950s; Baggot Street was the place to shop then. There were two hardware stores, Ryder and Sons, and Weirs. Except for a gap when my children were young, I've always worked in Baggot Street, since 1977 with Weirs and before that for the supermarket which was here."

The Weir story has a sort of beginnings in 1791 when Richard Lord, Viscount Fitzwilliam, gave one Thomas Carroll Esq permission to build the four-storey building at 21 Upper Baggot Street. Almost a century later, in 1885,

William Weir, then just 27 years old, took over and opened for business as William Weir, Ironmonger and Sanitary Engineer. He had 12 children, seven of them boys and all of whom, in their time, worked in the landmark shop with its distinguishing front bow window.

Fifteen years after he'd set up, as the 20th century kicked off, William was joined by one of his sons and the company became William Weir & Son.

And so the company went, run by the Weir family through the first half of that turbulent century until, in 1956, William Charles Weir (born in 1891) died. With no one to carry it on, the shop closed. A year later, in 1957, the landmark hardware/ironmongers became a supermarket. It took 20 years, and Curust Industries Ltd, for it to return to its original way of life.

Sitting in a room over the shop, sash windows of what used be a Weir family drawingroom overlooking the street, Roland Brocklesby, a man who calls a spade a spade, says Curust bought Weirs "because we needed the dry storage space behind the shop. Austin Hanna was our sales manager at the time - he'd been with Wigoder's in Talbot Street, which is long gone now.

"When we took over Weirs we were a manufacturing and distributing company to the paint and hardware trade, and decided to let out the shop part of the building."

This proved more difficult than imagined and when Lenehans hardware said the space, some 279sq m (3,000sq ft), was too small to be of interest, Curust decided to reopen the shop themselves, as Weirs of Baggot Street, hardware and ironmongery. The year was 1977.

"I approached Catherine Weir, widow of young Mr Weir who'd been running the shop, and she performed the opening for us. When her husband ran the shop it was by himself and he'd had ceiling hooks with everything hanging from them. The story goes that when he was asked for something he didn't have he closed the shop, cycled off to J C Parkes in the Coombe - legendary hardware suppliers - cycled back with what he needed and reopened the shop."

Curust, in 1977, was a thriving business. "It was set up in 1952," Roland Brocklesby explains, "as a subsidiary of Curust Ltd, UK. The founders - Wilfred Cantwell, late president of the Royal Institute of Architects, J D Barry, Dermot O'Connor, head of O'Connor & Co Chartered Accountants and Professor of Accountancy in UCD, and my father, D H Brocklesby - bought Curust UK out in 1955. Within two years they'd taken them over altogether, a case of owning our previous owners."

The fledgling company in no time found itself importing Lowe Rust Primer in 40ft. containers and so, Roland Brocklesby says, "we opened a factory and manufactured it ourselves, just out the back. We had a staff of about 12. I came into the company in 1954, when I was 24. I'd been in CT (Coras Tractála, forerunner of today's Export Board) where I was their first graduate employee. I'd studied in UCD."

Curust own brands include Douglas Paint Sundries, Lower Rust Primer and Tessi Security Products. They're also suppliers of specialist security products to locksmiths and roller shutter companies in this country and the UK. All quite compatible with the Weir retailing line.

Roland Brocklesby was involved then, as now, in decisions about Weirs, the shop.

"We first tried a wallpaper and paint shop but speedily discovered this wasn't our scene. We reconverted to an ironmongers because Curust had a great line in locks - padlocks in particular."

Nora Walsh, working part-time in the shop at the time, remembers events well. "We had a few locks from the beginning, and a screw stand. People began asking for batteries, then more locks. The style for wallpaper changed in the late 1970s and people began painting their walls. The wallpaper market collapsed. Things changed through the 1980s," she smiles an acknowledgement, "Mr Brocklesby was the ideas man. When manager, Gerry Clohessy, left in 2001; he'd been here for 22 years; Mr Brocklesby took a greater day-to-day interest in things."

"We'd very much Weirs' history in mind from the beginning," says the "ideas man" himself, "and quite deliberately decided to use the Weir name, following deliberately too in the steps of Mr Weir, who was basically an ironmonger. DIY was a fairly new thing in the 1950s and Baggot Street always had an interesting mix of people, lots of relics of auld decency about.

"We refurbished and replaced the windows and brought back the whole front of the shop, which had been bright blue as the Five Star Supermarket. When we'd finished, and been given the local seal of approval, the powers-that-be slapped a preservation order on it. So the original house remains as it was with cornicing, etc. Locks are still a big percentage of our business and we've a call-out service."

Pointing to the niceties of their symmetrical coming together, he says that Curust (whose MD is his son Richard) "no longer manufactures paint but still deals in hardware, locks, etc. There is a line of continuity between the new Weirs and the old Weirs, many of whom live in Canada and make a point of coming to see us from time to time."

Norah says that the customers who best remember the old Weirs are "mostly men. They'll tell how Weirs used do deliveries on bikes. We'd a customer whose first job was in Weirs and who'd come back after a life in the Canadian Mounties. There's still a lot of the older community living around, who want what they know. A lot of new customers come from the new apartments around and from offices at lunchtime. There are a lot of celebrities in the area too and they come in for candles and washers or whatever. It's an interesting street; it always was."

Weirs of 2006 sells candles in variety, gifts and ornamental goods of many kinds, as well as what it's always been known for - tools, abrasives, stains, waxes, paints and electrical goods. It is bright and it is friendly and, so solidly a part of the street, the supermarket years might never have happened. Will things stay this way?

"One hopes so," Roland Brocklesby smiles, "these things are in the lap of the gods - and whoever follows me."