Just as every cottager owned a section of bog for their use...it's still referred to in legal jargon as having ' turbary rights'...so did every townland have a lime kiln.
Ours is by the side of the road on the edge of Michael's field...not that is anything to see now, though he did have the man who built the new drystone wall curve the new wall round where it used to be. There is a much bigger one on the boundary between two fields not far from the Bishops Palace...Frank uses it to put bales of silage in for the cattle's winter feed...Frank not being one for old traditions...
One of the main problems people have in old cottages...ourselves included... is damp. Because we want to use fancy colours for our internal walls and it's easy to buy a tin from the ironmongers and a new brush and within a day or so you have a yellow sitting room or a pink bedroom. It's only when those brightly hued walls begin to seep moisture and you're frantically buying de-humidifiers that it begins to slowly dawn that using acrylic paint on old stones doesn't work.
They can't breathe...especially when the gaps between the outer walls is filled with horse hair and small stones that were no good for anything else.
We have our doors closed in the winter even when there's a roaring fire in the fireplace or the range is belting out heat...cottagers only closed their doors at night or if the woman of the place was giving birth...the rest of the time they stood open allowing a constant flow of air...and the chickens could come and go as they pleased.
Lime-wash is quick and easy to apply...it was cheap so everyone could afford it. You could paint the inside and the outside of your cottage...all the buildings and any walls denoting your property...
It allows the stones to breathe so there is no evidence of damp patches lurking behind furniture...it's also naturally cleansing, which must have been useful in times of sickness either in the people or the farm animals.
There was never a problem is getting a supply of water to mix with the powdered lime...there were always plenty of wells available for common usage. All you'd have needed was a bucket and a brush.
Traditionally every cottage would have been freshly lime-washed at Imbolg...the Spring, and then again at Samhain when the year drew to a close.
Re-decorating wasn't the undertaking it is nowadays...no-one had much in the way of furniture. There'd be a dresser or course...even the very poorest people had a huge dresser standing up against one wall...sometimes there'd have been a table and enough plain wooden chairs for everyone but generally there'd be two chairs for the parents...the children stood at the table to eat their food.
Clothes were hung on nails hammered into the backs of doors...some cottagers owned a wooden chest to keep spare bed-linen in but they were the exception rather than the rule. A plain wooden settle by the fire for the elderly parents to sit upon and that was about the sum of the furniture in the main room. All the children slept together in one bed or in the roof space under the thatch and the parents had a bed for themselves and the baby.
So re-decorating must have been done in a day...if you think I'm writing about two hundred years ago I'm not...the description of the interior of a common-place cottage comes from people I've met who are about my age...middle sixties...early seventies.
It's only relatively recently that I've discovered why we have damp patches in all our rooms...why people like The Dealer, of whom I've written before, had lime-washed his beautiful little cottage...why he had half-doors both front and back and why he kept them open for all of the summer...
It is said by many that old stones hold memories...a vibe, if you like, from the past. How awful of us to slather them in Dulux non-drip for our personal convenience so those memories are blurred and distorted.
Old Stone Walls And Ripe Damsons...And being Lucky...
