Building Surveys of Five Vernacular Cottages from County Fermanagh

Vernacular architecture constitutes the ordinary small houses of the recent past where the material, form and design were dictated by the experience and expertise of the craftworkers who constructed the buildings and the resources that were locally available. Often thatched, these dwellings have now been largely abandoned, falling into ruin, and vanishing as a component of our cultural landscape. As a module within the Lough Erne Landscape Partnership (LELP) Legacy of Landscape programme in 2021 the Centre for Community Archaeology at Queen’s developed a two-stage project designed to provide community participants with the knowledge and training required to ‘read’ these buildings and undertake basic measured surveys and associated historical research on examples in the Fermanagh landscape, thereby empowering local communities to better engage with their built heritage. A four-week VLE entitled Recording and Surveying Vernacular Buildings was launched on the LELP’s online heritage campus on 19th July and this was followed by a series of five building surveys conducted over a fortnight in August 2021.

Dr Colm Donnelly is the Co-Director of the Centre for Community Archaeology in the School of Natural and Built Environment at Queen’s University Belfast. His research focuses on the history, architecture and archaeology of Ireland from the Late Medieval period through to the 20th century.