ABSTRACT
In modern usage the words turf and sod, applied to a grassy surface, have become interchangeable, but I follow the Irish practice of referring to a slice of grass and earth as a sod (alternatively a scraw) and to accumulated decomposed vegetation (in Scotland peat or moss) as turf. One may also speak of turf-sods, i.e. the parings of a turf bog, and of a turf-sod house, but by a turf house I mean a structure whose walls are composed of solid banks of uncut peat. Turf houses can never have been common, for except during reclamation work or under distress, human settlement would avoid areas of deep bog. In periods of war, famine and eviction, when wanderers were forced to take refuge in the bogs, improvised shelters were frequently constructed in bog-holes, but the particular turf house I wish to discuss is something different, a large comfortable dwelling which was occupied until some fifteen years ago. Although I have seen animal shelters whose walls were similarly composed of the natural standing turf, 1 this house in County Antrim is the only example of its kind I have come across (Plate I). 2 It is of great interest because of the roofing technique, of a type which may well have characterized some of the very numerous sod houses of historic times and which has been postulated for some prehistoric houses known from excavations. We have at best, so far as I am aware, only exterior photographs of such sod (or turf-sod) houses as survived in Ulster into the early years of the present century (Plate II) and it is fortunate that this Antrim turf house, because of its solid walls, had a longer life. I regard this house, then, as belonging to the family of sod houses, and I suggest it is a family of very ancient lineage.
