Questions about Thatched and Traditional Houses

Reference code: FOL.QUES/1
Level of description: Series
Title: Questions about Thatched and Traditional Houses
Scope and content: "Until relatively recently, the traditional houses over much of Ulster were single-storey, thatched dwellings. In some parts of the Province, these still exist in small numbers; in others, they have disappeared, but details of their appearance and construction are remembered. This questionnaire is designed to gather information that will, in some cases, have disappeared completely, and we hope that you will assist the Ulster Folk Museum by answering the following questions. Negative answers are just as important as those giving positive information."

1. Were traditional houses built with stone walls, or with mud or clay walls?
2. How many doors led directly into the kitchen from the outside: one or two opposite doors?
3. Was there a jamb-wall (or hannel-wall) screening the hearth from the door? If so, give any other local names by which this was known. Did the jamb-wall always have a peephole or small window in it?
4. How was the chimney constructed in the oldest houses? Is there any tradition of basket-work chimneys having been used? What were these made of? Did they have a special local name?
5. Did traditional houses have a bed-outshot in the main room of the house? By which name was this locally known (e.g. cuilteach, cailleach, culog, hag, field-bed, etc.)?
6. Did the houses have straight gables and only two sloping thatched surfaces? If not, did they have hip-ended roofs with four sloping surfaces? If the roof was of neither of these forms, describe what it looked like.
7. Which material was usually used for thatching the roof (e.g. reeds, flax, wheat or oat straw, etc.?
8. How was the thatch held down to the rook (e.g. with scallops or scobes, mud, ropes, etc.)?
9. Was it usual to have the dwelling and byre under a single continuous thatched roof on farms, but not necessarily entered by a single door? If not, is the byre always a separate building?
10. Is there any tradition of anything having been put under the floor, or hearth or threshold, e.g. an animal’s skull, when the house was being built? And if so, what was it in your district?
11. Was anything ever placed elsewhere in the house walls, or roof, or above the door, and if so, what?
12. When the house was being built, what was put on top of the chimney when the highest point had been reached? (In Germany and Yugoslavia, it was a branch of a tree; in Japan, a branch with paper decorations.