‘When I started, I said I’d give it a week’ — the blacksmith working with Dublin City Council for 44 years
Pat Corry, a master blacksmith employed by Dublin City Council (DCC), has been diligently working away in Ballsbridge’s Herbert Park depot since 1982.
The Ashtown man repairs and restores railings, gates, park benches and anything else that requires the deft hand of a tradesman armed with four decades of experience.
“I don’t care much for publicity,” he says, with a wry smile when we first meet. “More publicity means more work.”
On the other hand, DCC’s South East Area district parks officer Ian O’Lone has no such qualms about singing Mr Corry’s praises.
“He’s a master craftsman. We’re very lucky to have such a skilled trade here in Herbert Park,” he said. “Anything artistic or that, he could put his hand to anything.”
Mr Corry (66) recently won the chief executive’s special award from DCC in recognition of his latest project, which is ongoing: the reconstruction of the railings in Palmerston Park.
The amenity, one of Dublin’s finest examples of late-Victorian urban design, is surrounded by intricate railings, but it was the internal fencing around the park’s water feature that caught his eye.
“They were redoing the pond [in Palmerston Park] and putting a new pump system into it for the waterfall,” he said.
“There’s a railing on the front area where you can look in at the waterfall … it was put in, I’d say, in the ‘70s, but it wasn’t near what the original one was.”
Mr Corry’s goal was to recreate the original design of the railings from a grainy, 90-year-old picture. Having grown up near Phoenix Park with its reams of fencing, he embraced the challenge.
“That photograph must have been taken in the 1930s,” he said, holding up a blurry print-out of gently rounded railing designs.
“I had to make it up from that photo. I went around Phoenix Park and Stephen’s Green to see was there anything like that, and there wasn’t.”
The original structures had corroded beyond recognition because railings from that era weren’t galvanised to protect them from the elements.
Using the grainy picture as a reference, Mr Corry set about crafting several custom-designed jigs that allowed him to create railings to exactly the right specification for the park.
The jigs use a fitting cleverly sourced from old playground equipment and ball bearings to roll the bars into the perfect shape.
His painstaking work is about 80pc complete and installed, with the remaining sections needing to be bent to fit around some of the park’s paths and specific curves.
“There’s a lot of intricate work involved in bends and stuff to go in there,” said Mr O’Lone, adding that he “defies anyone” to be able to tell the difference between the new railings and century-old originals once the work is complete.
But despite the initiative and craft on display, Mr Corry is one of only three remaining blacksmiths directly employed by the council, down from five a few years ago.
They are spread across St Anne’s Park, Walkinstown, and Mr Corry in Herbert Park, but this number is set to drop further as experienced staff retire.
“Pat’s coming near the end of his time [working for the council] and unfortunately, we didn’t have any set-up there with regard to having young lads following, training, apprenticeships, or things like that,” Mr O’Lone said.
With two of the three DCC blacksmiths approaching retirement, he said he fears a vast catalogue of knowledge and skill “is being lost for ever”.
The council is increasingly reliant on outside contractors to perform repairs and other metalwork, but the intrinsic expertise attached to having an in-house blacksmith team is something Mr O’Lone is keen to retain.
“To my mind, it makes perfect sense to have such a trade directly associated with [the council], as opposed to outsourcing,” he said, pointing to the sheer scale of railings, gates, and benches under the council’s purview.
“But it is what it is – it’s not a decision that’s been made here locally,” he said.
Along with his work in parks, Mr Corry also repairs railings and gates damaged by car crashes or council trees falling over.
The blacksmith role conjures up images of a large forge brimming with glowing rods of metal. However, Mr Corry relies on an oxy-acetylene torch, which can reach up to 3,500C, to heat steel and wrought iron these days.
Travelling around the city with his equipment, he said he gets occasional compliments from the public for his work, but mostly receives complaints that an area of the park is temporarily fenced off.
“When I first came here [to the council], I said I’d give it a week,” he said, dryly.
“It’s been a long week,” added Mr O’Lone with a laugh.