Chemist shop clearance sale is just the tonic for collectors

Collectors who value Ireland's retail history will be interested in Hayes Conynham Robinson contents sale at Victor Mee

A mahogany pharmacy shop-back with 84 labelled drawers.

THE clearance sale of contents from the chain of Hayes Conyngham Robinson chemist shops at Victor Mee next week is just the tonic for collectors with an interest in Ireland’s retail history.

An entire era of shop fittings went into long-term storage when the business was taken over by Boots in 1998. Historic items like beautiful old cash registers and the kind of medicine bottles your grandmother would have been familiar with will come under the hammer at a three-day live and online sale from Belturbet, Co Cavan, which will include pub and advertising memorabilia, starting on Monday.

A collection of eight Bristol blue chemist bottles.

Founded in 1897, HCR operated for over 100 years, ending up with 30 locations across Ireland. All proceeds from the HCR lots are to be donated to Barnardos. 

Chemist jars with black and gold labels and early 20th-century amber glass chemist bottles are redolent of an era that many older readers will fondly remember, a time when no visit by a child with an adult to a chemist shop would be complete without a twisted orange coloured barley sugar stick.

A messenger bike from Roches pub grocery shop on Inishbofin at Victor Mee.

The ingenuity of collectors is legendary and the thought of new life and new uses for venerable items like an early 20th-century mahogany chemist counter back is heartening.

This one, complete with a centre-glazed door and gilded prescriptions pediment, is estimated at €1,500-€2,500. There is an estimate of €1,000-€2,000 on a mahogany chemist counter and a shop counter with a bank of 50 drawers is estimated at €1,500-€3,000. 

There are various collections of chemists' poison bottles, amber bottles and glass jars at estimates of from €50 to €250.

There are wall cabinets, wooden advertising boxes, floor cabinets with adjustable shelving, shop display cabinets and even an animatronic chemists' advertising machine.

An early 20th-century chemist shop fitting at Victor Mee.

A Kirker and Green advertising mirror from the Connswater Distillery in Belfast, which closed in 1929, is a leading lot in the large pub and memorabilia section of the sale.

There is a highly collectable Mitchell’s Whiskey mirror, Capstan and Players cigarette machines and some bottles of rare Irish whiskey. The catalogue is online and Victor Mee is hosting actual viewings for the first time in two years. Auctions are at 5pm on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.