You can do that with anything."True, but it takes a little thought, and a lot of conviction. Melanie RickeyPurple sheepskin sleeveless coat, pounds 1,923, by Krizia, 25 Conduit Street, London W1, enquiries 071-491 4987; grey tunic, pounds 328, by MaxMara, 32 Sloane Street, London SW1, enquiries 0171-287 3434; white Yeti boots, pounds 650, by Manolo Blahnik, 49 Old Church Street, London SW3, enquiries 0171-352 3863Cream sheepskin jacket, pounds 750, by Owen Gaster, as before; black knitted skirt, pounds 338, by Clements Ribeiro, from Tokio, 309 Brompton Road, London SW3, enquiries 0171-409 7719 Stylist's assistant Holly WoodHair Mark AndersonMake-up Siobhan Luckie using AvedaModel Alex Paton at Select. We sort everything and keep things together in sets."Declan Molloy of Victorian Wood Works shares James Webster's positive distaste for newly felled timber. "I'm known in the demolition trade as a wood man," says Molloy proudly as he strides through his warehouse, a Grade II-listed former repair shed for steam engines at the London International Freight Terminal in Stratford, east London, that still draws railway buffs on a pilgrimage Wood in varying stages of reclamation is stacked everywhere. As well as battered wheelbarrows there are water carriers - butts on wheels to carry water from one end of the garden to another in pre-hose days "It's not all country-house property. We try to keep something for everyone," Webster explains.Most stock is sourced within East Anglia - 80 per cent of his custom is local, so people want the characteristic orangey-red bricks to repair existing walls, or clay pammets (tiles) to lay floors in the vernacular East Anglian style "We're not the cheapest but we have the best quality.

"No amount of advertising on this planet will sell something like that unless someone wants it. Far better that a customer comes along to buy something else and just happens upon it that way."At his yard there are five acres of more readily accessible salvage to rummage through. There are shapely cast-iron pig feeders that make good garden planters, turn-of-the-century wrought-iron harrows that can be wall-mounted as an alternative to trellising, shallow stoneware sinks, milk churns, garden rollers - all will make decorative garden focal points. Today, he has about half-a-dozen, timber-framed buildings in numbered and colour- coded pieces waiting for buyers, lying around like some nightmarishly complicated Lego set for grown-ups He doesn't advertise.

He bought the cottage for only pounds 20, dismantled it carefully and he was in business. But although builders are no longer breaking up Georgian fireplaces to get at the cast-iron grates for scrap, Salvo's Thornton Kay feels the reclamation situation is actually getting worse. "Ironic really, since we're supposed to be more ecologically aware," he says.There is nothing new about architectural salvage. In many old buildings you can detect earlier elements: a piece of oak from an ancient barn used to repair a door frame; timbers from early glassless windows re-used as wall studding.James Webster of Tower Materials in Mendlesham, Suffolk, feels guilty every time he looks at a new piece of oak. "I see it as a tree that died, along with all the creatures that depended on it." Webster began in the business about 25 years ago, when he cycled past an Elizabethan cottage about to be demolished to make way for a new house. Buying from a Salvo dealer minimises risk of stolen goods or materials stripped from listed buildings.Architectural salvage has changed over the past 10 years. A decade ago, the emphasis was on tracking down a period fireplace appropriate to your house or looking for shutters to fit the empty cases around the sitting-room windows of your Victorian villa.

These days, the emphasis is on wholesale reclamation and preservation. This was established in response to a spate of thefts during the salvage boom in the Eighties. In-Situ partner Stan Newsham is passionate about renovating cast- iron radiators and still winces when he recalls the demolition of the Maxwell House building in Manchester - hundreds of radiators were thrown out of the windows, along with panelling, flooring and spiral staircases.It's the sort of waste that sickens Thornton Kay, founder of Salvo, an information exchange dedicated to bringing together buyers and sellers of architectural salvage which also acts as an informal trade body for dealers who agree to operate under the Salvo code. It's going to take a peculiar kind of vision to work out how to re-use them, but there are interior decorators who will no doubt rise to the challenge.In one corner, carefully protected by bubblewrap, is a dismantled church altar. You don't have to travel far to see how such an item might be used in the wider world. Via Fossa, a bar on Manchester's fashionable Canal Street, has gargoyles leering down from the walls, dividing walls made from church screens, and biblical scenes carved in stone in the entrance.For every successful salvage mission there is always the one that got away.