Trade NamesAfter dipping a toe in shoe-repairs in the 1930s, five generations of Cleggs have stayed in the trade, writes Rose Doyle

William Clegg V is about as low-key as you can get about his place in life as the fifth generation William in a family of craftsmen shoe-makers and repairers. On a Saturday morning at his shop at 124 Lower Rathmines Road customers come, discuss heels, soles and stitching and, satisfied to a man and woman, go. He has red hair and greets them with an easy grin. He likes Rathmines, says he's on the sunny side of the street too.

It's an extraordinarily intimate business, repairing footwear, the life lived in a pair of boots or shoes exposed in its frailty as they sit on the counter. William V gives them efficient and thorough attention; all shoes can be repaired, he says. Resoling a pair of men's leather shoes he hand-cuts a channel for the stitching and, once stitched, places the leather back over the stitching to prevent it wearing through too quickly.

William Clegg V's great, and great-great, grandfathers were shoe-makers "in Dublin - they were all Dubs, came from the Liberties" he says. "My great-grandfather had clients in Manhattan and all over Ireland. My grandfather, William, was a shoe-repairer and set up in Golden Lane in the Liberties in 1934. There were five shoe-repair shops there already and, at one stage, when the competition was charging 9d if you put the heel on your shoe yourself, my grandfather undercut by charging 8d and putting the heel on for the customer. He used do hob-nails, too, charging a half-crown (2/6d) for men's leather soles and heels with hob-nail studs which were called 'half-crown bashers' in the 1930s."

Things, as they do, changed.

"In the mid-1930s cheap shoes began coming in from Czechoslovakia. They cost 10/- a pair and at the time it cost 5/- to have shoes soled and heeled. So people inclined to get new shoes - a bit like it is now. This only lasted a short time because the war started and Hitler put a stop to manufacturing in Czechoslovakia."

His grandfather, who was William Clegg III, moved and set up shop at 26 South King Street in 1939 when he married Elizabeth Land (Lily); the woman who brought the red hair gene to the family.

"Times were tough during the war, with a shortage of rubber and nails, so my grandfather ran two taxis," William V goes on. "He'd a Chrysler and a Ford V8. I've no idea where he got them; he was very resourceful. He worked hard his entire life to make a living. He was a good man, very quiet, very humble, always smiling. He worked late into the night and looked after his employees very well. After they went home he'd work on.

"My grandmother worked with him, always. She was well liked by the customers. They were a strong couple, together. Then, in 1946, he opened another shop at 156 Lower Rathmines Road, backing onto what's now the Leinster Cricket Ground. When it became a shopping centre he moved here, in 1971."

William and Lily Clegg had four children - William, Noel, Bernadette, Marie and Jacinta. The Cleggs, man and boy through the generations, have nearly all gone into the shoe-repairing business. William Clegg III's five brothers all did. Gerry, Breno (Brendan), Eamonn, Dessie, and Pearse had heel bars across the city when they were prolific and popular in the 1960s.

"Everyone set up their own shop; we were all over the city," William V says. "Cleggs had the heel bar in Roches Stores, which employed 22 people and was the biggest in Europe at the time. Stiletto heels were the thing and 'While U Wait' came in. Business was booming."

That generation of Clegg brothers "were all into ballroom dancing, too, and tap as well", William V says. "My grandfather's sister, Flo, was one of the Royalettes in the Theatre Royal."

The shoe repairing tradition has gone on. Two of William III and Lily Clegg's offspring run their own shoe-repair outlets today: Noel Clegg is in Drimnagh and William Clegg IV (William V's father) is in Castle Street, Dalkey.

"When my grandfather moved first to Rathmines," William V says, affection for his father's father obvious still, "there was big business in gents' soles and heels. Soles were always stitched on; the stitching machine was going all the time. The basement used be full of shoe lasts. He kept the shop in South King Street going until 1961 when he had to close down because they were developing the St Stephen's Green shopping centre.

"Before he closed it, and any time the machine broke down here, he used send boots back to be stitched by Peadar Byrne in South King Street. He was noted for being good to the people working for him and, when things were tough in the cold winter of 1947, he didn't lay off workers but got them to repair and paint the shop instead!"

He remembers something else. "He won a pale blue Volkswagen Beetle in a church raffle and loved that car, used go home to his lunch in Walkinstown in it. He worked until the day he died in 1991. He was sorely missed by customers, they were all very upset when he died."

William V's father meanwhile, in 1972, had established his own, Dalkey-based business. Proving that business and pleasure definitely work, he'd married Sylvia Handy, a customer in the Rathmines shop and together they reared their two sons, William V and Andrew, who works for Concern.

William Clegg IV was always keen on the shoe-repair business, always, his son says, "in and around the business of shoe-repairs from when he left school at 15. He served his time in Rathmines, learning the trade. He went out in the van, too, collecting shoes and dropping them back. Then he managed one of the shops, then got his own place in Dalkey."

For a while, after his grandfather William III died, William IV and his sisters, Marie and Jacinta, ran the 124 Lower Rathmines Road shop. Then William V, who'd studied proprietorship at DIT in Mountjoy Square, took over. He'd trained in shoe-repairing during many summers with his father - "and it's in the blood anyway!" He's been there nine years now, a one-man operation from the beginning.

But his is a varied operation, and with family back-up. "We do shoe-covering for brides," William V explains, "mostly plain, small-heeled shoes. They bring me a half-yard of material, together with the shoes, and I send them to Dalkey to my dad and he has them back to me, covered, in 10 days."

He does a lot of men's leather shoes in Rathmines; brands such as Church, Grenson, Barker, Loake. He cuts keys, and sells "small items" like locks and polishes. "I really enjoy some of the men's shoes," he admits, "a good quality man's leather shoe is a little bit of sculpture on its own. Putting a finish to it is very enjoyable. A good quality shoe of any kind is always nice to work on. Women's shoes are more refined. If a stiletto heel is worn down to the metal some places won't repair it, but I always have a go. Toes and heels are my bread and butter!

"Repairing quality leather shoes is an environmentally sound alternative to buying cheap shoes manufactured from harmful man-made materials in cheap labour countries and throwing them away. I think Irish people are well educated and are beginning to see the effects of their consumption beyond the euro cost and see that the practise of buying disposable products, footwear or otherwise, is unsustainable.

"People tell me that few enough people must get their shoes repaired and that it's a dying trade. But affluence has given people greater spending power. Those who spend money on quality footwear and expensive designer brands want to repair those shoes and keep them comfortable and looking well. I guess this Christmas, being the busiest of the previous 10 years for Clegg's, is testimony to that. I think shoe-repair shops are likely to be in demand for the foreseeable future."