School: Ardcath (roll number 1903)

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   “The houses long ago were thatched with the best wheaten straw.”

   

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   The houses long ago were thatched with the best wheaten straw. They were built with yellow mud. As long as the roof was on the walls, they stood up, but if the roof was not on the walls and the wet soaked into it they fell. They mixed straw or animals hair or rushes to stick with the mud and hold it up. Sometimes the walls were very crooked after been built.
   Even now-a-days some of the ruins are to be found with straw and hair in its walls. When building those houses they did not go down very far when laying the foundation, and they could only put up about a foot every day, for the reason they had to let the but they had built up dry our or else it would fall down.The houses were built in such a way that they were cooler in Summer and Winter. In those times they only slated building in the Parish was the Church.
   In this part of the country nearly all the houses are thatched. Even the people with fifty or sixty acres of land have a thatched house, where in other parts of the country only an acre or two have one. There are more thatched houses in this Parish than any other Parish of its size in the country. In other parts of the country the people

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   Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.

   History Edit

   Language

   English

   Collector

   Brian Gough

   Gender

   Male

   Age

   12