Just outside the village of Bruff in east Limerick, there’s a little museum that would give some of the big national collections a run for their money.

Stuffed to the gills with artefacts from the past 150 years, the Museum of Old Irish Ways is a wonderful trip down memory lane for the older generation, while younger people will be amazed at how we managed to survive in a time before electricity, not to mind the digital age.

The pub with no beer.

For Denis O’Connor, who made his living as a farmer and welder, the collecting bug started with a tractor – or more precisely a Massey Ferguson 35X.

“My father Denis bought this tractor in 1964 and I was about nine at the time. As I grew up we had several tractors, but the little Massey was always there in the yard.

"When dad died the tractor was running but it was in very bad shape and I decided to restore it in his memory.”

Getting the bug

When Denis finished the work, he thought he’d take the tractor to a vintage show and that’s when he had an eye-opening experience.

“I’d never been at a vintage show and I saw all these people with their collections of household items. They had lovely displays and I thought I’d like to do that, but I never thought I’d get hooked.”

A typical living space from not too long ago.

Denis freely admits that he became consumed with collecting, regularly leaving home before 6am to get to a good car boot sale. Today, Denis reckons he has at least 10,000 individual items from every corner of the country and further afield on display. All the items are laid out in a two-storey shed that’s divided into rooms, such as the cobblers, the grocers and the school.

“It’s come on a terror since we sectioned it off and put everything in its own rightful home.”

Opened to the public about seven years ago, the museum is popular with active retirement groups, Men’s Sheds and historical groups, and word is spreading.

Denis O'Connor well and truly caught the collecting bug.

“It keeps me sane. As to the future, I would like to think the collection could be kept together and hopefully the family will keep it going.”

The Museum of Old Irish Ways is open practically all the time, but do ring 086-154-1078 in advance. Check out the location on its Facebook page – Old Irish Ways.

It’s a perfect place to while away a wet autumn day, or indeed any day of the year. And what’s more, Irish Country Living can bet you will go back for a second look.

Fire bellows

Wexford man Phillip Pierce made the first fire bellows in 1839. If he had patented it, he would have been a wealthy man.

A bellow was used to blow in fresh air to get fires going. It was rarely, if ever, used in the west of Ireland because the main fuel was turf and the dust would go everywhere.

The bellows were only made in Ireland. Watch out for the Doyle’s of Wexford brand. They featured a swans head on the neck and are worth about €2,500.

Grocery shop

Standing before the grocery shop it’s hard to know where to look, there’s just so much to see. Denis has collected the items from car boot sales, flea markets, jumble sales and anywhere he can get them.

He’s even been given some by visitors to the museum. If you are a certain age try to see how many of the brands you recognise.

One of the items on display is a pot mender used to fix a hole in a saucepan or bucket.

The grocery. Does it bring back memories?

You put a tin washer and rubber disk on each side of the hole and a screw went right through the centre. When you tightened the screw it sealed the leak.

“Practically everything was repaired multiple times. Utensils had to be well gone to be thrown out. I suppose our parents knew all about sustainable living long before we ever heard the term used,” says Denis.

Hardware store

The hardware store is home to an array of brands that were available right across the country. One of the items on display was fine wire that was used to repair blown fuses.

The hardware shop. What brands still exist today?

This was long before electric current circuit breaker boards were in use.

Creamery

The standard milk churns are still to be got, although Denis tries to source churns bearing a creamery name. They don’t come cheap, costing between €120-130 each.

“It’s hard enough to come by these churns. They were used to transport excess cream by train to the likes of the Cleeve’s toffee factory in Limerick.”

Can you find your local butter brand?

The ever-versatile butter box could be lined and padded and used for storage, or to keep clocking hens safe until the eggs had hatched. Nearly every village in the creamery milk-producing areas had a creamery and each one had their own labelled butter.

Cobblers

The cobbler room looks exactly as if the cobbler himself had just gone for his dinner, and most of the collection was sourced from Quinn’s Cobblers in Newcastlewest.

The perfectly preserved cobbler shop that was once open for business in Newcastlewest.

“The shop was closing and everything was heading for a skip, so we relocated it here. I believe at one stage there were 38 cobblers on Maiden Street, Newcastlewest, and now there’s only one.”

Oil cans

The collection of oil cans tells its own story about our changing world. “They are all made from tin. Today it’s all plastic with a paper sticker stuck on. Unlike the past, there’s no character to what’s being produced today,” Denis says.

Flour bags

Flour bags had plenty of uses. They served as sheets and pillow cases and one visitor told Denis that as a child his football shorts were made from a Ranks flour bag and the label was still on them when he went to play.

Flour bags were made into sheets and pillowcases and even football tags

Egg washer

Having spent most Thursday nights of my teenage years washing eggs, I was more than interested in the egg washer on display.

The egg washer.

You pop the eggs in one end, turn the handle, the eggs move along and emerge sparkling clean.

“That’s a rare bit of kit that I found in an auto jumble sale in Clontibrit,” says Denis.

Carpentry

If you want to begin collecting then carpentry tools are a good place to begin.

Collecting tools or farmyard items a is a great way to begin your own museum.

“There are more tools for carpentry than any other trade and chisels and planes are fairly indestructible so are inexpensive to buy,” Denis points out.

Denis has an impressive memory and can tell visitors about the purpose of all the tools and history of each display. I was looking at what I thought was an ordinary buggy only for Denis to tell me it dated from World War I and was used to bring shells to the front line. “I had a visitor from one of the big US military museums here and he’d only ever seen a photo of one. I bought it in a car boot sale in Castletownroche.”

A rare buggy used to bring shells to the front line in WW1.

For Denis, the most significant item in his museum is a ‘Famine Pot’ that came from Jimmy Walsh of Nephin Co Mayo. “That pot always makes me think of the millions who died or were forced to emigrate from 1845 on. Anything that could be found went into these pots to provide some sort of nourishment.”

A Famine pot from Mayo.