Traditional Building Skills: #HeritageWeek2020

For this years Heritage Week events have largely moved online due to the restrictions around the pandemic. With that in mind, here’s an overview of lesson learned from renovating a thatched cottage. The emphasis is very much on relearning enough about traditional building skills to be able to engage in an informed way with what needed to be done.

By way of an introduction, here’s a little video clip. You can read the Heritage Week contribution on Relearning Traditional Building Skills here (and view other Heritage Week events here).

History Ireland

Here’s a link to an article on the house in the current issue of History Ireland.

Thatching project now finished!

Once all the thatching was completed some work was required on the chimney and apron to take account of the raised height of the roof ridge.

Raising the height of the chimney

To complete the project the final job was to paint the chimney and apron white.

Finshed!

West gable

West gable alongside modern extension

North face

South face

Now we have a sound dry roof its time to finish off works on the inside attic rooms of the thatch.

Update on thatching progress (2)

The continuation of the good spell of weather has meant the thatching has moved along at great speed, the whole back elevation has now being completed and work has begun on the ridge and eaves.

Work begins on the eyebrow window

First section of finished eave

Work begins on the ridge

Front elevation showing initial work on ridge

Ridge with hazel attached

Update on thatching progress (1)

The super weather we had over the past few weeks has meant great progress has been made on the thatching. Below is a photographic record of what’s been done to date.

Stripping the thatch

First of many loads of old straw being taken away

Front of cottage, half new straw, half old straw.

Old straw being removed from front of cottage

Pulling straw

Bundles of straw ready to go up on the roof

New straw on eaves, old straw still visible on top corner

Almost all the old thatch covered over

Front of cottage almost completely covered in new straw

 

Stripping the roof for the re-thatching

A week or so ago, work began on preparing the roof for re-thatching. The whole roof has to be stripped back down as far as possible to find a secure base for re-thatching. Stripping the thatch means exactly that. So it begins…

Weather damage

Having spent a winter in the house to test the quality of the thatch, not only did the wind take a few bits out, but we got Matt Whelan, a thatcher from South Wexford, to have a look at the condition of the roof. Matt reckoned there was insufficient thatch on both the front and back and that the quality of the base layers had deteriorated significantly. With the interior of the roof secured during the work that was done in 2012 and 2013, we had to accept the fact that we were looking at a full re-thatch in 2014. Fortunately, we’ve able to secure some grant support through Wexford County Council and the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. So we’ll be blogging progress through June and July as the roof is stripped down and re-thatched.

Cleaning up a cast iron cooking stove.

After a long delay as we finished enough to get back living in the house, here’s some posts on details of the finishing. The cast iron cooking stove in the living room got some close attention (not enough yet though as we still have a bit of welding and replacement of the interior to do). The stove itself was cleaned all over with a standard cup brush and came up like new metal (as below).

Below is a close-up of the metal stove plates and flues, and the water boiler, after cleaning. The flues were cleaned out as part of inserting steel flues liners and vermiculite, but we’ll come back to that another day!

We also cleaned up the surround. The heavy green paint finish (with a lead-based green paint) was removed by hand. It was already flaking and a scraper took most of it off. This exposed a red/pink plaster finish over the original brick and lime-rendered finishes of the stove surround (you can see traces off all of these in the first photo). After some agonising over how to finish the stove surround, it was scraped and sanded clean. For those who are particular about this type of thing – it seemed irrelevant which messy job was done first, but since we started using the cup-brush to clean the stove almost by accident, it was done first. It was a seriously messy job producing a lot of fine powder and the living room was sealed off with dust sheets while it was done. Once the dust was cleared up we simply taped up the stove before cleaning up the paint work.

The stove surround was finished in a chalk paint (see below). The stove itself was buffed with some stove black. Having installed flue-liners to protect the thatch, it is pretty much back in working order.

 

 

Lime rendering finally finished – for now anyway!

Finished lime rendering on south east corner

 

 

 

 

 

 

A quick post on geneaological sources…

This is a quick post for anyone interested in geneaology and family history:

The 1901 and 1911 census of Ireland can both be searched here on the National Archives webpages. Claire’s grandmothers aunt who lived in the house until the early 1970s is listed here in the 1901 cenus and here in the 1911 census. The census returns include details recorded about the house, including the number of rooms and windows, outbuildings, materials in the wall and roof (Ballygarran townland saw the proportion of thatched houses decrease significantly between 1901 and 1911). Changes in the number of rooms between the 1901 return and 1911 return show that a wooden extension, removed in the 1970s, was added between those dates and at least one room was subdivided in the downstairs or the loft. The census returns also included details on the outbuildings in 1901 and 1911.

Another potential source which raises more questions than it answered was Griffiths Valuation, published between 1847 and 1864, which includes maps showing the extent of ownership along with details of rents, etc. The cottage is located in the holding shown in the screen grab from Griffiths Valuation below, but it isn’t clear whether it is vacant or occupied from the information for that holding (see No 9 Patrick Murphy under Ballygarran below). Other historic maps showing the property and the surrounding area (and more recent aerial photographs) are available on the Ordnance Survey’s website.

The above is a screen grab from the map pages for Griffiths Valuation on askaboutireland.ie. The image below is a screen grab of the ledger page.