EPISODE 443 IRISH STORIES: IRISH COTTAGE
| Note to John Wardle, if email is received please respond, thank you. |
EPISODE 443 IRISH STORIES…IRISH COTTAGES (HOMES)
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alan skeoch
oct. 2021
I wish I had taken pictures of many of the homes where our work force lived. As I remember they
used the term ‘cottage’ for their homes. In Canada that has a different meaning. Second homes. In Ireland in 1960 There was one
cottage that stood out from others because the owner, perhaps his name was Mr. Casey, spent
a lot of time pruning and painting to make the place look magnificent.
Sad to say a lot of these small rural cottages on one acre lots were abandoned. Or maybe it was just that I looked for signs of
the past and tended to photograph empty, often roofless, places where people once lived.
This home in Bunmahon was just abandoned and allowed to collapse. Barney told me a story about the former owners. A story
on the edge of my consciousness. I think the family retained ownership and just moved on…let the house fall apart. Ruins like this
must have been common in the late 1870’s when the mine closed and the people (population was around 2,000 then)….Miners are
nomadic. The miners of Bunmahon moved west to the United States and Canada.
This ancient bee hive home has withstood the ravages of time. AT one time a monk may have lived here contemplating….just contemplating.
What? What would you think about while sitting cross legged in a tiny stone house where you couldn’t stand? Just sitting there alone.
I am so glad I took this picture because it was so ’normal’ to me in 1960. Homes that were whitewashed…very neat in most
cases…with every inch of the acre of land being used. Often with domestic animals.
And ancient graveyards were often present.
So many of the abandoned buildings looked like this…as if the rooves had been removed deliberately. Seems to me I read somewhere that
landlords forcibly removed those rooves to force indigent tenants to move on…i.e. people who were not paying rent. That happened
in the Highland Clearances in Scotland when large landwoners wanted land for sheep and not for people. The 1840’s were rough years
made worse by the sudden failure of the potato crop across western Europe.
