Vernacular Buildings - Appreciating the Ordinary

A short post on Farming Life focuses on vernacular buildings in rural Ireland and a project to map and preserve these wee bits of workaday history in and around Londonderry.

Vernacular buildings are of the land, often built of local materials such as stone and wood. Over time they. too, become the land. These ordinary and often overlooked bits of architectural history are symbolic and "represent the ingenuity and resourcefulness of our ancestors." They exhibit "the human ability to work with the local natural environment and to be an integral part of it."

This sort of "vernacular built heritage" weaves itself so intimately with the local natural environment over time that it becomes simply part of it, part of the sense of place for that particular community. I can think of several examples of old stone housing foundations, old barns, or pump houses that I used to play in and around as kid. They were indeed distinct parts of the landscape, part of what connected me to those places.