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The abandoned village of Slievemore once had some 100 one-room houses built of un-mortared stone by poor subsistence farmers. Most families had to share their house with cows and other livestock, who would be brought into the house at night and tied at the southern end. The tethering rings can still be seen in the walls. The field system consisted primarily of “lazy beds” (or raised beds on the sloped boggy ground) for growing potatoes, which were abandoned during the potato famines of 1845-49 when the mono-genetic crop was attacked by fungal blight. Potatoes are a New World crop that was widely adopted here in the 1700s as it provided the most calories per unit of land on the thin and boggy soils of western Ireland. The Great Hunger killed an estimated one million people and caused millions more to leave Ireland. Today the area is used primarily for grazing sheep, but the ancient “lazy beds” can still be seen over 150 years later.

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The abandoned village of Slievemore once had some 100 one-room houses built of un-mortared stone by poor subsistence farmers. Most families had to share their house with cows and other livestock, who would be brought into the house at night and tied at the southern end. The tethering rings can still be seen in the walls. The field system consisted primarily of “lazy beds” (or raised beds on the sloped boggy ground) for growing potatoes, which were abandoned during the potato famines of 1845-49 when the mono-genetic crop was attacked by fungal blight. Potatoes are a New World crop that was widely adopted here in the 1700s as it provided the most calories per unit of land on the thin and boggy soils of western Ireland. The Great Hunger killed an estimated one million people and caused millions more to leave Ireland. Today the area is used primarily for grazing sheep, but the ancient “lazy beds” can still be seen over 150 years later.

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