Old House

transcribed at

An Old House  [duchas:5041602]

There was an old house about sixty years ago at Lisnashanna Cross.
The only trade that remains of it now is the garden in which it stood.  The old mud walls were there until a few years ago.
The house was thatched.  There was no chimney.  The smoke got out through a hole in the roof.  There was a wooden box round the hole.  There was only one room.  The floor was made of mud.  Sometimes this little hut was flooded, when the residents had two little bedrooms made of boards and thatched, to which they used to go, until the flood went down.
The old mud-wall house had a bed in the kitchen.  It was called a settle bed and was in a corner.
The fire was in the middle of the side wall on the hearth.
There was one small window in the back wall.  It was

An Old House  [duchas:5041603]

made of glass.
The door was in the gable end.  There were several props to keep up the walls.  "Smokers" were used to give light at night.  It was a kind of tin lamp with no globe or shade.  These "smokers" were usually hung in a corner of the chimney, and the smoke escapes up the chimney.  In the house at our Cross the smoke went through the house.