It’s all fair and well when an interior designer tells you that the spectacular Edwardian bathtub in their project was sourced from a reclamation yard, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it was easy, nor that you will have the same luck finding treasure. I speak from experience, having hopefully ambled into Frome Reclamation one Saturday morning on the hunt for some old rim locks. While I had a very enjoyable couple of hours rummaging through dusty boxes and finding everything other than the desired door furniture, I left empty handed. But that is the way of the reclamation yard – you might spend months sidestepping stacks of tiles and rows of wooden doors, before you finally land on the thing you’re actually after. ‘A visit to a salvage yard is more than just a business trip,’ suggests Yorkshire-based designer-maker George Younge, one of House & Garden’s 2025 Rising Stars, who regularly uses reclaimed materials to create furniture and interiors. ‘It’s a ritualised experience in which you relax and open your mind to all kinds of possibilities and purchases.’
So, where do you start and how do you avoid feeling frustrated? ‘It can be an overwhelming environment, so you need to be quite focussed,’ suggests Adam Hills, co-founder of the cult salvage shop Retrouvius in Kensal Rise. ‘Think tangentially, be open-minded and imaginative, and go and touch stuff,’ he adds. That last point is crucial: so many reclamation yards today list their stock through their websites and Instagram and it can be tempting to simply buy it online and have it delivered straight to your door. But, the in-person experience, Adam suggests, can’t be beaten. ‘There is no replacement for getting in your car and going to these places, because something you might have glossed over online might look and feel incredible,’ he explains. ‘It’s very hard to identify things like proportions and weight online.’ Maria Speake, Retrouvius’s co-founder, who runs the interior design studio, agrees. ‘Some materials don’t look like much in a picture,’ she says, explaining how she’d recently found some 1920s vitreous glass in the Retrouvius warehouse that had been sitting there for years. ‘It would have looked rubbish in a photograph, but in real life it is really amazing and you can do something really creative with it.’
As for choosing the reclamation yards to visit, George tends to stick to the following criteria: ‘it should have a bad name (or even no name), be difficult to find and be reluctant to part with its stock,’ he suggests. One of his favourites is called Itsajob farm, down a bumpy dirt track in the Yorkshire Dales. ‘Stacks of the very best York stone salvaged from former industrial buildings across northern England are piled beside a shed where cows wade through half a meter of slurry.’ Interior designer Victoria Barker, who runs Studio Faeger and has recently bought a lot of reclaimed materials and items for the renovation of her 16th-century farmhouse, suggests doing your research to find out if reclamation yards specialise in a particular area. ‘Most reclamation yards sell a huge variety of things, but some specialise in different areas depending on their expertise, buying power and contacts within the industry,’ she explains. ‘It’s good to know who to go to, for what.’ A good example is Mongers of Hingham in Norwich – one of Victoria’s favourite reclamation yards – which focusses on sanitaryware and brassware. George is a big fan of Period Pine Doors, in Huby near York. ‘Inside are more doors than you could ever imagine, all meticulously arranged according to a sophisticated chronology, where the Victorian era has many different subsections. Going through all the doors is a lesson in the history of ornament and design,’ he explains.
Maria warns against going with a very set idea of what you want in mind. ‘If you’re doing a project, start by finding the things you love and then work out how they will fit into your project,’ she explains. Adam agrees: ‘go to a salvage yard very early on in a project – that way you can buy the doors and then make the hole for them to fit, rather than the other way round.’ Doors, Adam suggests, are particularly good to buy at reclamation yards. ‘There are thousands sitting in yards around the country at generally quite reasonable prices – why would you buy new?’ Maria suggests looking for any salvage materials that come in a large quantity: ‘it’s what I’m always drawn to, because you can be so much more playful and creative with it you’ve got a good amount.’ For Victoria, she heads to reclamation yards for architectural decoration pieces that are ‘hard to find new and on budget’ – butler sinks, prep sinks, stone fireplace hearths, oak lintels, dolly bins, runs of old hooks. ‘Anything of solid, honest quality that isn’t too obviously at the end of life and requires little maintenance once I’ve rehomed it,’ she explains.
For George, stone floors, tiles, beams and planters all represent reliable buys from reclamation yards. ‘If you’re buying flooring or tiling, always buy at least 10-15% more than you need. More times than I care to remember, I’ve made the journey back to a yard for a few more tiles or a bit more stone and matching material retrospectively from different batches can be very challenging,’ explains George. Victoria also warns that reclaimed wooden flooring can often take a fair amount of work. ‘Reclamation yards tend to sell it in its original reclaimed state, which is partly why it looks so charming. But when laying it, it’ll need cutting and most likely sanding to seal it, and if that prep work is too heavy, you will remove the patina and what makes the floor charming in the first instance,’ she explains. There is also the added labour cost to factor in. ‘If you’re doing work yourself, you need to think about the skills you’ve got before you start buying complex reclaimed materials,’ suggests Maria. You also, she adds, need to think about the economics: sometimes it is more expensive to buy a reclaimed piece of ironmongery rather than a piece of good quality, new brassware. ‘In that case you might think of clever ways to mix the two by buying new brassware shelf brackets and a lovely piece of old timber from a reclamation yard,’ suggests Maria.
As for the pieces to avoid at reclamation yards, Maria, George and Victoria all suggest approaching anything with moving parts or obvious renovation needs with caution. ‘Re-enamelling a bath can be a considerable expense, old sinks and sanitaryware might have challenging twists, lights might need complex rewiring and cast iron radiators can sometimes have hairline cracks that only show when you pressurise them,’ explains George. ‘You have to factor in the cost of coaxing these back to life, and the risk of catastrophic failure,’ he adds. Taps, says Maria, can be a nightmare. ‘People do buy them, but they will likely need a full professional refurbishment and there’s only a few specialists who still do this and it’s expensive.’ Victoria, who admits a bit of an obsession with reclaimed 19th-century brassware, advises only buying fully restored taps from reputable reclamation sources. ‘Monger’s of Hingham in Norwich are my go to, and I would trust them with my life,’ she says. Victoria’s other top tip is to make sure that your builders and plumbers are happy working with reclaimed sanitaryware and brassware. ‘They can be tricky to connect up with standard fittings, so make sure what you’re buying is compatible and, if you can, supplied with appropriate waste and overflow fittings if you can.’
A final consideration, of course, is how you get your treasure home. Many reclamation yards offer nationwide delivery, but do bear in mind the cost of this in addition to your finds. By its nature reclamation is bulky and not the easiest to condense into a van load. ‘I once bought a big order of York Stone from a low key yard in Preston who dropped it off in the middle of the street outside my home address at 10pm,’ recalls George, who admits that he is such a committed patron of reclamation yards that he has inadvertently created his own. ‘I make a habit of buying things I don’t need, because so often a piece of salvage can provide inspiration for a project.’ And that, of course, is exactly what reclamation yards are all about – the return visits, the endless hunt for that special weird and wonderful material that you never realised you needed until you stumbled upon it.
10 reclamation yards worth having on your radar
A favourite of Berdoulat’s Patrick Williams, known for its doors, fireplaces and floors.
A thoroughly misleading name, as there is so much more than fireplaces at this reclamation yard, which is a favourite of George Younge’s. ‘There are many different buildings, each dedicated to a particular category of salvage - a portacabin full of mirrors, an old container with drawers of hardware, wriggly tin sheds full of bathroom fixtures and fittings,’ explains George.
One of Victoria Barker’s go-tos for architectural finishes, pine flooring, hooks, dolly bins, internal doors and bread boards.
Just next to Frome train station, this architectural salvage yard has a bit of everything – doors, windows and baths – including the extraordinary Edwardian bathtub with a built-in shower enclosure in Keith & Glen Senk’s English country house.
One of England’s best known resources for architectural salvage, which is a favourite amongst interior designers. You will find everything from Edwardian pine floorboards to stoneware urns. ‘You pay the prices but you know it's bought with consideration and with a lot of life left in it,’ says Victoria Barker.
Great for sinks – and a firm favourite of Victoria Barker and Holly Howe, who have both bought handsome butler sinks from here.
This Kensal Rise based salvage shop has achieved cult-like status and presents a beautifully curated selection of reclaimed pieces, alongside a good stock of iroko lab tops and copper light windows.
This Hertfordshire based warehouse, a favourite with Maria Speake and Adam Hills, sells a bit of everything and have their own in-house restoration team to restore iron and stone and repurpose some wooden pieces.
Another go-to for Victoria Barker for sanitaryware and brassware, plus ‘beautiful rare buff quarry tiles and pamment tiles’. They restore all brassware, ensuring that you are buying pieces in fully working order.
Spread across 15,000 square feet, this Herefordshire reclamation yard sells architectural antiques and has its own in-house workshop to lovingly restore pieces. It also has a rather slick website to whet your appetite.
