Carleton’s Cottage

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A single storey, three bay, lobby entry thatched house with harled and whitened stone walls. The base of the front elevation is painted black.
The house faces west overlooking Springtown Road that travels eastwards from the Augher/Monaghan road just over a mile from the former town. The building is accessed by travelling a further three quarters of a mile.
The thatched covering is contained within concrete parapet gables. That on the north rises to a rendered chimneystack with thin projecting concrete capping. There is a similar feature over the position of the kitchen hearth.
The entrance with a timber sheeted door including door blocks, is flanked to the left (north) by one and to the right by two plain sashed vertically sliding windows. Sash stops are curved and sills are of traditional depths.
A blue plaque fixed between the right hand windows bears the inscription “William Carleton, 1794-1869, Poet and Novelist lived here”.
At the rear there are two single paned windows that are not provided with sills.
A range of outbuildings that enclose the forecourt at the north side of the site is part ruinous but otherwise is of harled and whitened construction with a felt roof covering secured by timber battens and ridge piece. The doors are timber sheeted that on the left being of the stable variety.

Historical information

This house is reputed to have been one of the boyhood homes of the poet and novelist William Carleton (1794-1869), ‘The Irish Dickens’, whose best known work ‘Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry’ (1829, 1833) has been described as ‘a tableau of the life of the country people of the north of Ireland before the famines of the 1840s altered their pattern of existence forever’.

As Carleton left the Clogher area for good in 1817, it follows that the house was built some time prior to this date. The property is shown OS map of 1834, but not recorded in the contemporary valuation. It is included in the second valuation of 1858, however, when it was occupied by a John McKenna, with Jonathan P. Richardson the immediate lessor and the rateable value a very modest 15/-.

The McKenna family acquired the freehold of the property in 1907 and remained in residence until 1929 at least.

In the 1844 edition of the second volume of the ‘Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry’, there is an illustration of ‘William Carleton’s Cottage near Clogher’, however this hipped roof dwelling appears to have been the house in which the writer was born and not the building we now know as ‘Carleton’s Cottage’. In his autobiography of 1868, Carleton describes his birthplace, (in the townland of Prillisk), as ‘a long, low house with a kitchen as you enter, and two other rooms, one at each side of it’, but also says that ‘it has not had one stone upon another for at least forty years’.

References- Primary sources
1 PRONI VAL/1A/6/59 OS map, County Tyrone sheet 59, with valuation
references, (1833-c.38)
2 PRONI VAL/1B/62A-K First valuation, Clogher (c.1833)
3 Carleton, William, ‘Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry’ vol.II, (Dublin, 1844) [This edition contains the illustration of ‘William Carleton’s cottage near Clogher’.]
4 PRONI VAL/2A/6/59B Revised OS map, County Tyrone sheet 59, with valuation references, (1858)
5 PRONI VAL/2B/6/2D Second valuation, Clogher (1858)
6 PRONI VAL/12B/36/11A-E Annual valuation revision books (1864-1929)
7 ‘The Life of William Carleton being his autobiography and letters, and an account of his life and writings, from the point at which the autobiography breaks off’, with an introduction by Mrs Cashel Hoey, 2. vols. (London, Downey & Co., 1896)

Secondary sources
1 Sandford, Ernest, ‘Discover Northern Ireland’ (1976), p.135
2 Magnusson, Magnus, and Goring, Rosemary eds., ‘Chambers Biographical Dictionary’ 5th Ed. (Edinburgh, 1990), p.262

Other references
1 EHS Survey of Thatched Buildings, report by Colin Hatrick, 1992
2 EHS Monitoring of Thatched Buildings, report by Colin Hatrick to EHS, 2 September 1994

William Carleton 1794-1869 poet and novelist known as “the Irish Dickens” spent his youth in this house. Of his many publications “Traits and stories of the Irish Peasantry” is the most widely known.
The north gable wall including the chimneystack and associated roof timberwork collapsed in 1994. The walling was rebuilt using random stone and roughly squared quoins. The roof timbers were renewed and the thatch was repaired at this time.

References – Primary Sources

1. OS map, 1st edition 1834, Co. Tyrone sheet 59. The house and a smaller outbuilding to the north are shown on this map.
2. OS map, 1st revision 1854, Co. Tyrone sheet 59. There is no change on this map.

Secondary Sources

Dictionary of National Biography, vol. III, pp.1006/7
Sandford, Ernest, Discover Northern Ireland, 1976, page 135
Survey of Thatched Buildings 1992, report by Colin Hatrick to EHS
Monitoring of Thatched Buildings, report by Colin Hatrick to EHS 2 September 1994

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
D. Plan Form
F. Structural System
I. Quality and survival of Interior
J. Setting

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest
V. Authorship
Z. Rarity

Evaluation

A single storey, three-bay, lobby entry thatched house with harled and whitened stone walls. All of the detail including the thatched roof covering remains. The external finish, the entrance door, windows and internal doors have been retained or restored as original.