Several people have mentioned to me that they were intrigued by the stone fences in Ireland.  There sure are a lot of them. The ground is clearly full of an over abundance of rocks that were put to good use dividing up areas of land that various families worked.  The house on the section of land in the photo above was abandoned during the famine of the 1840s.  

 Back then, most land was owned by the British.  In the 1600s the British took the land from the Irish who had owned it for hundreds of years. The native Irish were “allowed” to work the land that had been in their families for generations.  Unless the landlord decided to kick them off it, which sadly, many did.  During the famine of the 1840s, crops wouldn’t grow due to the blight, folks couldn’t pay their rent, so they were evicted. 

We learned that some more compassionate landlords made up work projects so their tenants could earn money for food.  One such project was the “Penny Wall”. In the photo above you see these walls that do nothing spread across the hill side. These walls were 8-10 feet tall, up to 3 feet thick, 300 feet long and served no purpose at all except to give people a back breaking project whereby they could earn a penny a day to pay their rent and buy food. These walls are practically sacred to the Irish today as a symbol of the terrible troubles they suffered in the famine. As a side note, it turns out that every now and then the builders would leave a small hole in the wall meant for fingers. People on either side of the wall could, by ancient tradition, slip their fingers in the hole and touch someone on the other side.  By doing this, promises were made, contracts formed, betrothals negotiated etc.

Ireland is a place full of history and stone fences play a big role in it.