House - 17th century, Youghal-Lands, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
House
Inside a seventeenth-century house in Youghal-Lands, County Cork, an ogham stone was pulled from the walls during reconstruction works in 1878.
Ogham is an early medieval script, typically carved along the edge of a standing stone in a series of notches and strokes representing letters, and its presence here as a repurposed building material is a quiet reminder of how older monuments were routinely dismantled and absorbed into later construction across Ireland. The stone, catalogued as CO067-096, had been built into the fabric of the structure long before anyone thought to record the fact.
The house itself retains two sections of its original clay-bonded masonry in the south wall, fabric that pre-dates 1700 AD and survives in a notably upstanding condition. Clay bonding, the use of puddled clay rather than lime mortar to hold stonework together, was common in vernacular Irish construction before lime kilns became widespread, and its survival here points to the relative care with which this part of the building has been maintained. The most substantial surviving element is a chimneypiece that runs through three full storeys, with fireplaces intact at each level internally. That a single chimney stack of this age should remain legible across three floors is unusual; such features were frequently altered, blocked, or demolished during later renovation.