‘Thousands of buildings are ripe for restoration’

Architect Hugh Wallace tells Alex Meehan how bringing old farm buildings back to life can generate new income opportunities for farmers and help repopulate the countryside

DOTTED all around Ireland are ramshackle and run-down farm buildings that could be restored and repurposed to offer landowners a second income. That’s the message from architect and restoration expert Hugh Wallace.

“The reality is that not many people are building new working farmhouses and outbuildings. But there are thousands of older buildings like that all around the country, and many of them are ripe for restoration,” he says.

“If you drive around the byroads of Ireland, pretty much in any county, there are farm buildings, amazing quadrangles of working buildings, and those lovely two-storey barns built to allow for hay storage upstairs and cattle downstairs.”

Mr Wallace is best known as a judge on RTÉ’s Home of the Year and a presenter on The Restoration Programme, and it’s in the capacity of a restoration expert that he attended this year’s Ploughing Championships, conducting a question-and-answer session around how to repurpose farm houses and buildings.

He also shared some tips on how to retain the heritage and integrity of period buildings while also looking at how the revived structure can help boost farming income.

“There’s a huge number of these buildings at the end of somebody’s garden or in a neglected farmyard. They’re just rotting because they’ve passed their sell-by date in terms of having a function on the farm,” he says.

“A lot of the time, you can see that there’s a bungalow from the 1970s or 80s built beside the old farm building, but that the older building has been left to rot and the cattle have moved in.”

Mr Wallace believes that there are a number of things that could be done with these buildings.

“There’s a whole opportunity to generate income for farmers, either by offering a means for visitors to take part in the life of the farm, or via short-term lets,” he says.

“They can also be used as studios for yoga and wellness activities — it’s often hard to find spaces for community activities in rural areas. I also know of one family with a quadrangle of farm buildings that they did up over 12 years — they spread the cost out over time — and they now have an income from their properties of over €60,000 a year.”

Economy

Mr Wallace says urban dwellers want experiences, and that includes being closer to agriculture.

“They want to walk around the fields, and meet and feed cows and lambs. Not many people know what that’s like any more, other than farmers,” he says.

According to Mr Wallace, many of these disused or rundown buildings have genuine architectural value, as they reflect the fact that for most of its history, Ireland has been an agrarian economy.

“It wasn’t until the 1930s and 40s that we moved towards a more urban society, continuing on into the 50s and 60s. Around the cities there are listed build- ings and conservation areas, but the farmlands and buildings of Ireland haven’t had the same protection, and as a result there are a lot of buildings out there just rotting into the ground,” he says.

“This needs to be an exercise in balance. These buildings need to be made fit for today’s way of living as well as preserving the past.

“Within that, any one of these buildings will have elements that are worthy of restoring or showing off. It could be a staircase or original beams in the roof — it’s a matter of retaining some of those elements.”

Repurposing and restoring older buildings has a secondary benefit in addition to generating income for their owners, according to Mr Wallace: it can help to attract people away from the cities.

“We need to repopulate the countryside, and these farm buildings are an ideal way to do that,” he says.

“In my opinion, buildings from pre-1910 should be preserved if they have architectural qualities. People should be able to do them up just like they can in urban areas under the Living Cities initiative.

“We should have a rural living initiative so that people can claim the money they spend on these buildings against income tax.”

Currently the Department of Agriculture offers grants in the form of the Traditional Farm Buildings Scheme, administered by the Heritage Council.

Under the scheme, grants are available to carry out approved conservation works to traditional farm buildings and associated landscape structures such as historic yard surfaces, walls, gate pillars and gates.

The principal objective of this scheme is to ensure that traditional farm buildings and other structures that contribute to the character of the landscape, and which are of significant heritage value, are conserved for agricultural use.

The grants available range between €4,000 and €25,000 and can cover up to 75pc of the cost of the works.

“From a planning point of

THEY DID UP A QUADRANGLE OF FARM BUILDINGS OVER 12 YEARS AND NOW HAVE AN INCOME OF €60,000 A YEAR

view, renovating an existing building is much less complicated than building something from scratch on a greenfield site,” says Mr Wallace.

“As long as a good bit of the roof is still on, then you can do maintenance work with very little hassle.

“These buildings when they’re finished will be slightly rough and grainy in some areas — they won’t be like a new build — and that means they’ll have character. People really like that.”