A musician who had a 30-year violin collection destroyed in the Belfast Cathedral Buildings fire says it is "scary" to think of the value of what was lost in the blaze.
Aidan Mullholand, owner of Mullholland Strings, woke on Monday morning to hear the news that his entire collection had been lost after emergency services were called to the Cathedral Quarter area of the city just after 5:40 am on October 3.
Aidan has been self-employed his entire adult life and spent countless hours restoring beloved instruments and encouraging musicians in his workshop. He told Belfast Live how he estimates that more than £30,000 of stock and equipment was destroyed by the fire.
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He said: "I've been there over 30 years - my old fiddle teacher used to say to me to learn how to repair bows and you'll always have an income. I went and did a summer course in violin making down in Cork and then did a course in bow making over in Oxford in England and then started my workshop.
"I started my workshop with a minimum of two and that was 30 years ago. I just kept revisiting everything I earned into what I had and maybe 10 years ago, I thought about selling nice instruments to people who wanted to upgrade.
"I naturally built up a stock of everything but I've always played the violin and fiddle myself and in some ways, I saw it as my way to subsidise my opportunity to keep playing music."
His world was turned upside down when he received a phone call telling him that the workshop was gone in the blaze.
"One of the keyholders heard from a friend during the night and he tried to contact me. Someone from the building phoned me on Monday morning and said there was some bad news and I asked him what was wrong and he said 'no not me, us'. He said that the building was on fire and I asked how bad is it and he told me it was gone.
"My top floor is carbon.
"Where I was, it is not like I might be able to get in and salvage anything. If you see the areal photographs, I know where everything was and it's just black spaces now," Aidan explained.
He continued: "I had a really good stock of instruments and all the tools I needed - I restocked during Covid too as I thought I would get an avalanche of work after that then this has happened.
"I've made a guesstimate of around £30,000 worth of stock but I would say it was more. I had a cello bow that was worth £5,000 alone.
"When I start reassessing the real value of replacing the instruments because I bought them at auction so to actually replace what I had in terms of instruments is probably double that. It's scary never mind all the other things that were there - wood, tools, bows.
"No one is going to be working down there for a while but there is nothing left for me, I am going to have to start again somewhere else."
Despite his entire collection being gone before his eyes, Aidan is currently restocking what he can while still carrying on what he loves from home and anyone who is in need of repairs can still contact him through his website here.
"I am just so glad that no one was injured and that we have to talk about business and money when someone has lost their life," he added.
A fundraiser has been started to allow Aidan to begin to rebuild some of his workshop so he can keep the music playing amidst the heartache of seeing his life's work destroyed overnight.
"I have been overwhelmed by the people reaching out. People are contacting me saying things like I fixed their son's violin 10 years and they remember my workshop and how sad it was to hear about the fire - people I don't even know.
"The world isn't all the horrible place we see on TV."
If you would like to donate to the fundraiser, see here.
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