Turning the old and odd into self-sustaining assets

The Irish Landmark Trust is making a significant contribution to conservation through its drive to restore architectural curiosities for short-term holiday letting. Frank McDonald reports

Finding viable, sympathetic new uses for historic properties is one of the great challenges facing us as Ireland's building stock ages and, in far too many cases, individual buildings deemed to have outlived their time are threatened with demolition.

But what to do with them? Some historic buildings, because of their small size or remote location, are simply too impractical to live in, though they might make ideal holiday homes - places to get away from it all for a week or even just a weekend.

The Irish Landmark Trust, which has just celebrated its 10th anniversary, is making a small but significant contribution to the cause of conservation through its drive to restore a varied range of architectural curiosities for short-term holiday letting.

It was a rich Englishman, Sir John Smith, who first came up with the idea in the 1960s when he established the Landmark Trust in Britain. Since then, it has restored or renovated some 200 buildings and turned itself into a thriving niche enterprise.

The deal is straightforward: Given that many owners haven't got the money to maintain gate lodges, small castles, follies or redundant lighthouses, they are persuaded to pass them on to the trust at a peppercorn rent for a minimum of 50 years.

Taking a long-term view, the owners know that the buildings will be restored and maintained by the trust and handed back in good condition after the lease expires. In the meantime, they will be used, enjoyed and even appreciated by the public.

Camilla McAleese, who chairs the Irish Landmark Trust, is proud of the fact that it has rescued 13 buildings so far - starting with the old lighthouse on Wicklow Head, built in 1781 and renovated sympathetically by the late Maura Shaffrey.

Her daughter, Gráinne Shaffrey, has also done work for the trust, as have Arthur Gibney, James Howley, Kevin Blackwood and Marcus Patton - all of them architects who are personally committed to the conservation of historic buildings.

Where extensions are needed, for example to provide a kitchen, they are done in a contemporary style rather than a pastiche of the original building. That is always the correct approach, however much some may not accept it even now.

Dr Edward McParland, architectural historian and founder member of the trust, says its ideal property would be "an architectural curiosity, distinguished and unusual, even strange or eccentric in some way". For him, follies have a special appeal.

The Wicklow Head lighthouse, for example, is five storeys high and has its kitchen on the top floor; everything has to be carted up the stone staircase. Yet it is the most popular of the trust's properties, achieving an 85 per cent occupancy rate.

Dr McParland, who still writes with a fountain pen and paper, points out that there are no television sets or microwaves, as the aim is to offer "a sense of retreat". Each property is also closed for one month of the 12 for annual maintenance.

"Our interest is primarily architectural. Technically, we're an educational trust rather than a holiday letting agency. What we're working towards is having 40 to 50 properties because this would give us critical mass, and make it self-financing."

Finding money is a perennial problem - not so much in Northern Ireland, where the trust has restored four properties and the UK Heritage Lottery Fund can always be counted on, but south of the Border, where the begging bowl is always out.

"We see ourselves as a last resort for special vernacular buildings that would be lost otherwise," says Camilla McAleese. "We're doing the Government's work really," though she concedes most would be too small for the State to take on.

The trust's annual funding of €300,000 from the Heritage Council "keeps us alive from year to year", says Mary O'Brien, its chief executive, whose office is on the ground floor of a restored early 18th century house in Dublin's Eustace Street.

But no State aid has yet been forthcoming for one of the trust's latest projects - the restoration of a derelict mews at the rear of 63 Merrion Square, which Dr McParland describes as "one of the basic building blocks of Georgian Dublin".

Though many mews properties survive, most have lost original fixtures through being turned into houses, restaurants or panel-beating shops resulting in "the disappearance of understanding of the integrity of the classic Dublin townhouse".

Owned by the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, the mews at 63 Merrion Square still has its original stalls and cobbled coachyard, both of which would be retained in the proposed restoration. Apparently, there's enough space upstairs for three bedrooms.

Funding is also being sought for four other properties that are "ready-to-go" if the money was available. These include two derelict schoolhouses built by Lady Louisa Connolly in 1814 to give free education to children in Celbridge, Co Kildare.

By contrast, £160,000, 80 per cent of the funding required to restore the 1825 Tudor Revival barbican gate lodge of Glenarm Castle in Co Antrim, home of Viscount Dunluce, is being provided by the UK Heritage Lottery Fund.

Given that there is an immediate - and profitable - use for each building once its restoration is completed, all of the trust's properties "look after their own future", as Mary O'Brien says. They are, in effect, transformed from liabilities into assets.

Bookings have exceeded expectations and visitor reaction has been enthusiastic. "Get the weather on the short-wave radio . . . and see it rolling in. Fantastic!", one English guest remarked after staying at Termon House, near Dungloe, Co Donegal.

Of Clomantagh Castle, in Co Kilkenny, another wrote: "What a place - a little bit of the old world, but with central heating! If there's a ghost here, it's very welcoming. Lovely gathering of friends in a calm, peaceful atmosphere. We'll be back."

Other options include lightkeepers' houses at Loop Head, Co Clare; Galley Head, Co Cork, and Blackhead, on Belfast Lough, as well as gate lodges ar Salterbridge, Co Waterford, Annes Grove, Co Cork and, most recently, Bushmills, Co Antrim.

Some 60 per cent of the guests in this "high-class tourism" venture are from Ireland, both north and south, 20 per cent from Britain, 10 per cent from the US and the rest from elsewhere - Germany, the Netherlands and even Australia.

What pleases Camilla McAleese is that so many of the trust's guests are younger people - "IFSC cookies", accountants and the like. "It's great to see twenty-somethings understanding that there's a real value in restoring historic buildings."

As for funding to keep the trust going, Dr McParland says "beating on doors" is the only tactic. "We talk to companies, private donors as well as to Government agencies and anyone else who shares our aspirations to save the architectural fabric."

• The Irish Landmark Trust may be contacted at 25 Eustace Street, Dublin 2. Telephone: (01)-6704733 or via its website www.irishlandmark.com