Peter Galligan, Moydorragh

Suffolk Street, Kells, County Meath

this is a postcard of Suffolk Street, Kells showing the Round Tower and St columba's Churhc steeple inthe backgound. At the upper end of the street and the near right hand side are several thatched houses.

Suffolk Street, Kells, County Meath

Suffolk Street, Kells, County Meath

this is a postcard of Suffolk Street, Kells showing the Round Tower and St columba's Churhc steeple inthe backgound. At the upper end of the street and the near right hand side are several thatched houses.

Enlarge image

Peter Galligan, Moydorragh, Nobber, was a noted thatcher over a wide area of the county. He remembers that around 1923 a labourer employed by a local farmer had an accident and as a result was left without a home. It was summer time and a group of local men built a two-room house for the family in Moydorragh Bog, working in the evenings for a couple of weeks. The walls were made of sods except the kitchen gable which was cut into a bank and had a fireplace with a cut tar barrel for a fireback. An oil drum was used for a chimney pot and projected at the gable near the top. There was a small window in the bedroom but the only light in the kitchen was over the half door and was curtained. Sedge and rushes were used for thatch.

The house burned down after about a year. As the sods for the walls were cut from the surface of the bog the structure became a tinder trap as it dried out. Mr Galligan says that there were several other houses built in a somewhat similar manner. He recounts that crooked couples were preferred to straight ones as they provided a good key for the thatch. On the older houses the cross members on the coupled rafters were all tied, rather than nailed. Riggings were not as long-lasting as a ridge board.

Both Mr Galligan and Mr Dick Cassidy, retired Road Overseer, Archdeaconry, Kells, reminded me of two huts built on Emlagh Bog by Meath County Council to house equipment and tools for turf cutting operations during the last war. These were simple "A" type structures about twenty-five feet wide with main members of birch poles at about two foot centres set in the ground. Across these were fixed birch lighter branches and the covering consisted of overlapping sods, cut from the surface of the bog. For six or seven years these huts remained watertight and would probably have lasted much longer but they were abandoned when the turf-cutting operations ceased.