Along Slea Head Drive, on the western tip of the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry, stands a small stone farmhouse that has come to be known as the Famine Cottage. It sits in the townland of Fahan, close to Ventry, beneath the slopes of Mount Eagle and facing the cliffs of Dún Beag. This page gathers what the archived record says about the building, the people who lived in it and the daily routines of a mountain farm in the nineteenth century.
A house left to its memories
For a long time the cottage sheltered a succession of occupants. Some arrived looking for a slower, simpler way of living, while photographers and writers came for the light and the mood of the surroundings. Today it stands empty, a quiet witness to the lives that passed through it and to the skill of the masons who raised its walls.
On a bright summer day it is easy to imagine the sorrow a family such as the Kavanaghs must have felt when they walked away from this view and toward the emigrant ships. Come on a cold, wet and windy winter night and the picture changes: you begin to see how hard it was to make a living from this exposed hillside, and why leaving so often looked like the better choice.
How the cottage was built
The house was put up in the early nineteenth century from mud and stone. At first it had just two rooms and a loft reached by ladder; a proper staircase came later. It also began with a thatched roof, which was unusual enough to be worth remembering. Around 1860 the landlord of the estate, the Earl of Cork, had the thatch replaced with slate, making this one of the first slated cottages in the district.
That roof job brought other changes. A bedroom was added on the left-hand side, and the main doorway had to be moved as a result. The outline of the earlier opening can still be traced in the wall. The work was cheaper than it might have been because the roof timbers came from a shipwreck, known locally as a “raic”. Searching the foot of the Dún Beag cliffs for wreckage was an ordinary part of local life, and a narrow track once ran down the steep face for that purpose. The Atlantic has since eaten away most of it.
Outbuildings and the beehive hut
- Tigh na mBá, the cowhouse, and An Stábla, the stable, stand to the left of the house and date from about 1880. Before them, animals shared the family’s living space. Larger holdings, a result of emigration and the easing of the penal laws, made separate shelters practical.
- Cró na gcearc, the hen house, sits to the right at the back and protected the farm’s fowl.
- The rooms at the rear of the main house were added around 1910.
- Behind the cottage is a large stone beehive hut believed to be at least 800 years old. During the Famine years it housed a pig, which gave it the name Puicín na Muice, the “pig’s house”.
Working the land
For most West Kerry families the potato, “an práta”, was the staple food. Around eight acres were planted with two varieties, one for the household and one for the animals. Fields were fertilised with animal manure (“oíleach”) and seaweed (“feamaineach”). Seaweed was gathered on a first-come, first-served basis, so people had to be on the shore as soon as the tide went out, since neighbours were after the same free fertiliser.
Planting took place in spring. Sprouted potatoes from the previous year, called “sciollháin”, were set in raised ridges known as “leaba phrátaí”, or potato beds. When the stalk (“an gas”) withered in autumn, the harvest began, and the crop was then stored over winter in a shallow pit lined and covered with straw.
Livestock added to the burden. During the worst years, holdings were often too small to support much, and under the penal laws Catholics could be taxed simply for the right to keep farm animals. Later, hand-milking cows became a daily task, and the stalls where the cows were tied can still be seen in Tigh na mBá.
Reading the sky and the land
Without clocks or barometers, people relied on nature. The sun gave the best guide to time: at noon it rose above the prehistoric fort below the cottage. Weather was harder to predict but mattered more, since both farming and fishing depended on it. If the houses on the far side of Dingle Bay in South Kerry looked sharp and close, a rough, stormy night was on its way. A cormorant flying high over land rather than over the sea warned of the same thing, and at the first sight of one, households gathered firewood and water and prepared to stay indoors.
Water and hardship
The nearest dependable water was a stream about 300 yards away, which could dry up in summer. Then the household had to go to the next spring, at the base of the Dún Beag cliffs, a dangerous trip usually made by the women of the village.
Hardship in the Famine years was severe, and one family story shows how severe. In the middle to late 1800s, the brother of a woman named Mary Long lived here with his wife. Six of their children died at birth. Because none had been baptised, the Church would not allow burial in consecrated ground, so the parents laid all six to rest on their own land, a few hundred yards from the house. A plain stone cross marks the spot.
Sheepdogs on the mountain
The farm has also been linked to sheepdog demonstrations, in which a local sheep farmer shows how dogs gather and steer a flock. The skill has passed down through generations on Mount Eagle, where sheep have grazed for hundreds of years, and it offers an insight into how people on the mountain once worked, planned their days and kept in touch with relatives miles away.
Continue exploring: read more about the cottage and its setting.