Corn store, Drom, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Food & Drink
On the western shoreline of a small coastal inlet just south of Leap in West Cork, a roofless three-storey shell sits built into the slope of the land, its outer walls stripped of the weatherslating that once protected them.
The building is unusual in plan, taking a Z-shape rather than the straightforward rectangle that most agricultural or commercial stores of its type follow. That angular footprint, combined with the way the structure steps into the hillside rather than sitting flat on level ground, suggests a builder working carefully around the particular demands of the site, making the most of a narrow shoreline position where flat land was scarce.
Corn stores of this kind were once common features along the inlets and river mouths of Cork and Kerry, serving as collection and dispatch points for grain at a time when coastal water transport was often more practical than moving heavy loads overland. Weatherslating, in which overlapping slates are fixed directly to external walls rather than to a roof, was a standard West Cork response to exposed conditions, keeping moisture out of the masonry in locations where Atlantic weather arrived with little warning. At Drom, both the slate covering and the roof itself are long gone, leaving the bare walls open to the elements that the original builders took such care to exclude.