The story of one home through three generations
I can’t say when the foundations of my grandparents’ house were laid. Some ancestor of mine has lived without distinction or fame on the same patch of heavy, unproductive land for at least 200 years. When the first full-scale assessment of property in Ireland was carried out in the years immediately after the famine, between 1845 and 1849, my family was already there in County Offaly, probably surviving hand to mouth in bog-side hovels. Their houses cost them one pound and five shillings annually, and land to farm was extra.
Two homes were recorded there during the census of 1911: one where the house still stands today; the other possibly where the cattle sheds are. By the time my grandfather, John Joe, was born in 1933, the main house was thatched. Forty years later, the thatch was removed and the house was crowned with its current slate roof.
Continue reading...from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2Y5brsG
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