Name

Grandfather's house

Address

About a half a mile up the hill from Primrose Cottage,
Oulartwick,
Oulart,
Co. Wexford.

Click to enlarge

About half a mile up the road from Primrose Cottage in the direction of Enniscorthy, you will find the ruins of a very large 2-storey thatched home. This is the home of the two elderly sisters who sold Primrose Cottage to Jim and Maureen. It’s the home of the sister’s ‘Great Grandfather’ who build Primrose cottage in approx 1840. So it’s an older house than Primrose cottage.

It wasn’t always in ruins. In fact, not so very long ago it was a comfortable lived-in home. And the first time I went looking for Jim – 25 years ago – he was doing a patching job on the roof of this house.

When Jim and Maureen first came to Wexford, Maureen used to do house cleaning work for the two sisters and this is the house that she cleaned. It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?  That 15 years ago in 1990, or thereabouts, Maureen cleaned this house on a regular basis and that it was the family home of two sisters.

That’s the problem with thatch and with houses built of mud walls – they will last for generations if they are looked after. But once a thatch- and –mud walled house is empty for any short length of time, it will quickly fall into disrepair and within a matter of years it will be beyond repair.

I find Grandfather’s house a very interesting yardstick by which to measure Anne and my house in Bridgetown. You see, this house was in far better condition than ours when we first purchased our house. It was safe, secure, and lived in, and Jim was up on the roof working on the ridge at the time when our house was empty, damp, cold and had a small tree growing out of the thatch.

I remember looking in at this house and thinking how snug and comfortable it was compared with our house. And now it’s gone! While our house, hopefully, will last for another 100 years. or many more.

Just think how different it would all have been if somebody had been there to keep the roof in repair.

One of the interesting things about this house is the very high 2-storey wooden uprights, around which the mud walls were constructed. Click on the picture below to go to a pdf page which contains a much larger and clearer picture.

Click to enlarge

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