Black house: Encyclopedia - Black house

Black house

For the novel by the same name, see Black House.

The black house is a traditional type of house which used to be common in Highland Scotland, the Hebrides and Ireland. It was generally built with double wall dry-stone walls packed with earth and wooden rafters covered with a turf roof, although reed thatch was occasionally used as the roofing material. The floor was generally flagstones or packed earth and there was a central hearth for the fire. There was no chimney for the smoke to escape though. Instead the smoke made its way through the roof.

The black house was used to accommodate livestock as well as people. People lived at one end and the animals lived at the other with a partition between them.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Black house", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki