Heritage Skills: The builders keeping historic crafts alive

David O’Donnell Anderson said his training in stonemasonry has helped inform his work as a joiner.

“Although they’re two different mediums, the better I get at carving stone, the better I get at carving wood, so there’s transferable skills there,” he said.

When I first encountered Jonathon Drummond in the workshop, he had a blowtorch in hand and a protective metal facemask on.

He said: “What you’re seeing me do today is practicing the craft of being a blacksmith and this craft has been about for about 4,000 years.

“People love going to see historic sites across Northern Ireland, but without these historic skills maintaining them, they’d start to fadeaway and fall apart.”