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Irish Archaeological Research Issue 2 Feb 2012 In the second of two articles on traditional houses, Dr Rowan McLaughlin discusses their symbolic importance, intrinsic value and place in the landscape. The Past in the Present Travelling through the countryside, we experience a landscape that has resulted from interactions between people and the environment over time. The human influence is particularly great in Ireland, where the agricultural history of recent centuries can be glimpsed almost everywhere (for example, see Figure 1). As a number of important works have shown, understanding the agricultural practices of recent centuries is therefore an intrinsic part of appreciating the landscape. The way in which domestic dwellings are distributed in the landscape is also an important factor in how the countryside takes shape. Last time, I argued that the abandonment of traditional rural dwellings represents an opportunity to study the reasons for site abandonment as an archaeological phenomenon. In this article the process is reversed: I want to look at contemporary settlement patterns in the countryside from an historical perspective, and discuss why understanding the past is critical to ensuring the continued survival of this delicate resource. Almost heaven... Because most of the countryside is under private ownership and not open to the public, our experience of the Irish countryside is as individual travellers upon the intensive network of country roads. For a start, the character of the countryside is often assessed by the perceived aesthetic values of a road... “this is a nice road” or “what a pleasant neighbourhood” are common observations. The paths roads take, and hence the journeys performed upon them, are influenced by an array of historical, social and geographical factors. Topography is often of least concern, as from a local scale, many rural roads in Ireland seem to defy all logic. They vary irrationally in width, zig‐zag or meander through completely flat terrain and ascend hills that could be avoided altogether. Two near‐parallel roads often exist where one would suffice; or sometimes frustratingly long journeys are required when a connecting road that should exist in logic fails to manifest in reality. Land‐ownership and access rights are often the reasons behind these patterns. Roads, being enclosed spaces (roads without boundaries are predominant around the world but very rare in Ireland), Figure 1: A typical scene of 18th century dwellings and 19th century cultivation ridges in 21st century Co. Down help to reinforce boundaries―both on a practical level, and in cognitive space. Roads are therefore central to concepts of land ownership; they exist as a means to connect territories both as mutual spaces and as boundaries in themselves. 31 LESSONS IN A LOST LANDSCAPE
Blight or Bliss? Irish Archaeological Research Issue 2 Jan 2012 Ireland, small as it is, has one of the highest total lengths of highways‐per‐capita of any country in the world. This is due to the network of small roads which exist to serve the low‐density, distributed pattern of dwellings that characterise the landscape. This pattern is of ancient origin. Even in Irish prehistory, despite some recently‐discovered and notable exceptions, most dwelling houses have been discovered in isolation or in very small groups. Indeed, urban living, a phenomenon that has revolutionised societies for millennia, took an unusually long time to catch‐on in Ireland; it was a concept imported by Viking settlers. Even today, a very significant number of households are isolated dwellings in the countryside―according to census results this is the predominant se�lement type in most parts of the island. Figure 2: “Bungalow Blight” at The Rosses, Co. Donegal. (Image by Yakshini, licenced under Creative Commons BY‐NC‐SA 2.0) This distributed settlement pattern is at odds with some current thinking in rural planning, and has led to real problems in certain areas. The most visible difficulty with persisting with this tradition is the proliferation of “bungalow blight” in some places (e.g. Figure 2). Developers have been given free reign in some of the most scenic locations, and the resulting sprawl of houses is disastrous for both the environment and the landscape. However, much tension exists between various interest groups who promote such development on economic and social grounds and those who are more concerned with heritage or environmental issues, and wish development to be more rigorously controlled. The planning authorities seem caught between the two viewpoints, and definitive solutions have proved elusive. In Northern Ireland, rural planning has become a political “hot potato” in recent years; the strict regulations governing the buildings of one‐off dwellings have become electoral issues. The overall trend, however, is for an acknowledgement that indiscriminate building throughout the countryside causes social problems and pressure on infrastructure, and is to be discouraged in favour of more centralised development. It is seldom mentioned that centralised development has always been a marginal pattern in Ireland, especially compared to Britain and many European countries. 32
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