Celtic Homes
The supposed foundations of the birthplace/family home of St Columcille in the middle of nowhere, County Donegal. This forlorn site is probably not a foudation at all, but rather just a flat rock. It is also very small, not the well-appointed palatial quarters described here.
The ancient middle class seem to have revelled in luxury every bit as much as the tastelessness of the recent Celtic Tigers. Below is the description of the home of a “boaire”. This was a freeman of a higher grade. This was not a member of the aristocracy. It was more likely the home of an early equivalent of a bank manager, upper-middle ranking civil servant or estate agent.
Even without a single mention of the surrounding neighbourhood it still sounds pretty flash.
The Crith Gablach (Brehon legal tract defining social status) describes the typical hiberno bourgeois pad. Although there is no mention of it being situated within close walking distance to anything, having an unsurpassed view of something or even mention of the surrounding neighbourhood it still sounds pretty flash. Also, there is no mention of local schools or the need for planning permission in the event of the owner wishing to extend:
“All the furniture of his house is in its proper place -
- a cauldron with its spit and handles;
- a vat in which a measure of ale may be brewed;
- a cauldron for everyday use;
- small vessels: iron pots and kneading trough and wooden mugs, so that he has no need to borrow them;
- a washing trough and a bath;
- tubs, candlesticks, knives for cutting rushes;
- rope, an adze, an auger, a pair of wooden shears, an axe;
- the work-tools for every season — every one unborrowed;
- a whetstone, a bill-hook, a hatchet, spears for slaughtering livestock;
- a fire always alive, a candle on the candlestick without fail;
- a full ploughing outfit with all its equipment.
There are two vessels in his house always: a vessel of milk and a vessel of ale.
He is a man of three snouts:
the snout of a rooting boar that cleaves dishonour in every season, the snout of a flitch of bacon on the hook, the snout of a plough under the ground; so that he is capable of receiving a king or a bishop or a scholar or a brehon from the road, prepared for the arrival of any guest-company.
He owns seven houses:
a kiln, a barn, a mill (a share in it so that it grinds for him), a house of twenty-seven feet, an outhouse of seventeen feet, a pig-stye, a pen for calves, a sheep-pen.
He has twenty cows, two bulls, six oxen, twenty pigs, twenty sheep, four domestic boars, two sows, a saddle-horse, an enamelled bridle, sixteen bushels of seed in the ground. He has a bronze cauldron in which there is room for a boar. He possesses a green in which there are always sheep without having to change pasture.
He and his wife have four suits of clothes.”
The Iron Age 'Pimperne house' was reconstructed at Butser Hill near Petersfield, Hampshire and suggests that it is probably a mistake to assume primitive squalor. (Richard Muir)
This article was posted by Ronan McDonnell on
Monday, August 22nd, 2011 at
21:36.
It is archived in Architecture, Culture, Dublin, History, Ireland and tagged archaeology, celtic, celts, Ireland, irish, roundhouse, thatched, tradition.
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