Kitchen, parlour and bedroom – transforming a house into a home
Traditional Architecture in Offaly: History, Materials and Furniture by Rachel McKenna (Offaly County Council, 2022) is a wonderful new addition to the growing collection of quality publications on the county of Offaly and its place in Irish heritage. For long neglected by the travel writers who took the coastal route the county has made up for that oversight since the late 1970s with a whole series of publications. The writer is the county architect and well placed to observe the changing scene and to appreciate what was distinctive about the habitations of the ordinary people (the third and fourth class housing of the 1841-61 censuses) and what has survived to the present day. As the CE of Offaly County Council has written in the Preface
This book is the outcome of significant and real engagement across the county by Offaly County Council’s architect, Rachel McKenna. While Rachel has been with the Council for fifteen years, she has been particularly focused on vernacular research since 2018 when the study of thatched properties in Offaly showed a decline in numbers.
Around the same time, the Egan family from Carrigeen farmhouse near Five Alley made contact with our Heritage Office. Carrigeen farmhouse has a wonderful range of fixtures and fittings which are all from the farm house and associated with relations and the Egan family. Claudia Kinmonth, an expert in this area, was invited to visit Carrigeen and her enthusiasm and national knowledge quickly indicated what an important house it was. With the support of Offaly County Council, Claudia worked with the Egan family to document the house and subsequently opened the house for tours for Heritage Week, an annual event that the family now host which is always a joy for those who book in for a tour. We were delighted when the family were awarded the Heritage Hero Award by the Heritage Council in 2019.
Through Rachel’s contact with Claudia, Rachel began to explore and delve into other sites in the county when out on site visits and to engage with owners asking them about what furniture and fixtures they might have – in some cases carefully tucked up in the farm sheds. And through field work and research the Offaly story began to unfold and to be recorded. This work went hand in hand with research and the quotations from travel writers greatly enhances the book. The outcome is engaging, superbly illustrated and a comprehensive presentation of this engaging subject.
The scholar and professional art and furniture historian Claudia Kinmonth (herself no stranger to Offaly) has noted of this new study
The book considers the setting of dwellings in the landscape or in an urban environment, then looks at plan types and materials used in their construction. Each of the three main rooms, kitchen, parlour and bedroom, are studied in detail with their fixtures and fittings. These elements generate the soul of the building, transforming a house into a home, filled with a tangible atmosphere, layered with personality. Their loss is irreplaceable, as is the direct link to past generations and craftspeople.
The book ends with a social history overview, to provide context and substance to the generations that went before us.
The book’s broad-ranging and ambitious reach includes a wealth of previously unseen primary source material. As an architect, Mc Kenna’s easily accessible drawings, sketches and house plans make clear features that can be hard to understand through text alone … She goes far beyond what the book’s simple title suggests, with sections on for example cooking and food history, as well as comparatively neglected objects such as gates, their latches and gateposts …
Useful to future restorers will be McKenna’s expertise on and illustration of vernacular windows, earthen or flagged floors, small yet impressively pretentious parlour fireplaces, jamb walls and their associated vertically folding doors. Further local studies of such houses and their contents would be welcome, to preserve in print (at least) so many important but fragile features.
The book’s broad-ranging and ambitious reach includes a wealth of previously unseen primary source material. As an architect, Mc Kenna’s easily accessible drawings, sketches and house plans make clear features that can be hard to understand through text alone … She goes far beyond what the book’s simple title suggests, with sections on for example cooking and food history, as well as comparatively neglected objects such as gates, their latches and gateposts …
Useful to future restorers will be McKenna’s expertise on and illustration of vernacular windows, earthen or flagged floors, small yet impressively pretentious parlour fireplaces, jamb walls and their associated vertically folding doors. Further local studies of such houses and their contents would be welcome, to preserve in print (at least) so many important but fragile features.
Rachel McKenna has drawn not only on her own skills as an artist, but also from the illustrators of the travel books of the nineteenth century to look at interiors
It is good to see both the Heritage Council and the Irish Georgian houses looking at the practical issues for ‘heritage houses’ to ensure that what we have left survives and can be a home to live in and not simply a museum piece. There is no doubt that like her previous book on Geashill this study will greatly enhance the appreciation for our traditional homesteads and their setting both in the rural landscape and in the smaller villages. There appears to be little left in the larger towns. In the case of Tullamore it would appear that there is no more than one thatched house where there was 500 in the early 1840s. Material from the Digby archive is used to illustrate the ‘model village’ of Geashill and later on photographs of M.W Biddulph for interiors of houses in Rathrobin. So much to comment on so get the book and enjoy for yourself. This book will we hope strengthen the surviving fabric in the smaller towns and villages. In the meantime this is great record and let’s hope it will not be in photographs only – important as that is.
Interior now out use. By Rachel McKenna
Traditional Architecture in Offaly: History, Materials and Furniture, 1800 to Present Day by Rachel McKenna
Offaly County Council 2022
288 pp, hardback
ISBN 978-1-9163287-6-1
The size is just short of A4 and fits easily in the hand and in the post.
€30.00 It is available from Offaly History, Bury Quay, Tullamore and can be ordered for postal delivery anywhere in the world via http://www.offalyhistory.com
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