What price that old cottage?

A non-horticultural piece from our Cottage Gardener, Nelly Dean:

I moved to Ireland four years ago into a house that was supposedly built around 1790.  I have found documentation relating to the family that lived here going back to 1835, so this house could be two hundred years old or more. We only intended putting in a new kitchen and bathroom at first, but as we lived in the house, it became apparent that it needed more care and attention.  We decided to gut the house and completely start again.

Before

The house had been covered at some stage with a concrete overcoat, maybe in the 1940s when the half storey was put on the top, giving 3 extra rooms, which would have been a relief for the family of seven who lived in the vernacular three roomed cottage with thatched roof.  The concrete must have been covered over again at some time and then lines etched in to make it look like it was made from concrete blocks.

We removed the concrete overcoat which harboured a lot of water and damp, took out all the plasterboard walls and for the first time in nearly seventy years the house could take a deep breath again. 

During this time, we had a number of people who came round and said helpfully, “would ye not tip it and build a nice new one out of concrete block?” to which we replied "why would we do that?"  The house has served families for over two hundred years; ok some of the stonework needed attention but that is the beauty of this kind of house, you can remove and replace stones and restore it back to a functioning property.

I think of the men who built this house and the work it took them.  The sandstones that lay around were taken and shaped by hand using hammer and chisel. Fires were built on top of larger stones and then quenched to split the stones to form lintels. Limestone was quarried and kilned, then ground to make the lime for the mortar.  Limestone was ground into grit to provide the ‘sand’ for the mortar.  The mortar would have been mixed by hand, no mixers in those days, and it would have had to have been worked for quite a while.  We have been told to mix concrete in with the lime, but this is bad advice.  The mortar is a material, softer than the stone which allows any moisture to transpire through it, so covering an old building with concrete or putting concrete in the joints just allows the damp to stay put. 

After

Now people come round and say, “What a lovely old house and isn’t the stonework beautiful” and it is. It nestles in the hillside and is part of the landscape, the gentle colours of the sandstone very pleasing on the eye. It is warm and dry inside. We hope that we have given it the chance to be around for another two hundred years.

Next time you see a little old cottage knocked please give a thought to those amazing men who worked so tirelessly for so little reward; weeks of hard work destroyed in a few hours. These cottages are worth saving, with a bit of effort. Wouldn’t it be a pity if we looked around one day and most of them had disappeared? These places are a testimony to the grit, determination and tenacity of the Irish people who survived in spite of all the hardships they have experienced.