House - vernacular house, Gortlahard, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
House
On a west-facing slope above the Sheen River valley in Gortlahard, County Kerry, a two-storey vernacular house sits in open pasture with its back turned to the view.
The front elevation faces east, a common enough orientation in rural Irish building, where shelter from Atlantic weather mattered more than any prospect. What makes this house worth pausing over is not any single dramatic feature but the degree to which it has been left alone.
The house follows a straightforward three-bay plan, with a central door flanked by sash windows glazed with sheet glass. The first-floor windows sit unusually close to the eaves and are noticeably smaller than those below, a detail that speaks to the practical logic of vernacular construction, where upper sleeping spaces were secondary to the working rooms beneath. A galvanised roof covers the gable ends, and while the building once had a chimney at each gable, the northern one has since been removed. Inside, the original layout survives intact. The kitchen sits to the left of the front door, as was typical in rural Kerry households, and retains its open fireplace and settle, the settle being a high-backed wooden bench that could double as a bed and that served as both furniture and draught barrier in uninsulated rooms. Outhouses adjoin each gable end, completing the functional cluster that characterised working farmsteads across Munster.