Settlement cluster, Barradaw, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Settlement Sites
On the Ordnance Survey's six-inch map of 1842, a small cluster of buildings is marked in County Cork under the name Barradaw East.
That cluster still exists in some form, but barely. What greets the eye today is largely a later accumulation of structures, most of them appearing to post-date that original survey, leaving very little that can be tied with confidence to the settlement as it was first recorded.
The most notable survivor is a single-storey, five-bay, gable-ended house, the kind of modest rural dwelling that was once common across Cork and the wider south of Ireland. It was originally thatched, with two chimneys, one positioned centrally and a second toward the right, and an off-centre doorway set to the left of the facade, a detail that gives the building a quietly asymmetrical character. The roof has since been replaced with corrugated iron, the utilitarian material that came to substitute for thatch across much of rural Ireland through the twentieth century as maintenance costs rose and thatching skills declined. The building is still occupied, which means it has fared better than many comparable structures that simply collapsed once left empty. The remaining dwellings and farm buildings on the site appear to be of a similar or later date, suggesting the settlement was largely rebuilt or extended in the period after 1842 rather than representing a continuous earlier fabric.