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Sat 08 Aug 2008Through a door to the past
No matter what part of the country they're from, visitors to a lovingly restored family cottage in Co Mayo recognise something about their own past there
RUINED VERNACULAR cottages are an architectural motif so familiar throughout Ireland that we take them entirely for granted. Yet these ruins are also a fundamental and frequently emotive part of our social, cultural and political history. Many Irish people with a rural background whose roots go back even a couple of generations have links to a traditional stone house somewhere, even if that house is now only a stub of wall or a pile of stones sinking irrevocably into a field.
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