In 1759 Edward Willes
visited Lord Kenmare’s hermitage on Innisfallen, a small island in Lough Leane,
Killarney. Much might be said about the poverty of the monks who founded a
monastery there, where over time the great work Annals of Innisfallen was
written. After nearly 1000 years there, the monks were dispossessed by
Elizabeth 1st of England.
Edward Willes wrote: “The
hermitage did not admit room for more than one servant to wait inside so the
side board was out of Doers and the wine served to us through the windows . . .
My Lord proposes building a room or two in the old Abbey style to retire to and
spend a day when he pleases”.
axioms (propositions
assumed without proof for the sake of
studying the
consequences that follow from them)
not:
sentences (varying
periods of time spent in prison)
on huts (though not directly the
unfinished hut at Carbeth)
The
history of hutting is predicated on two factors: simplicity and poverty.
Poverty,
not of imagination, but of financial resources.
Poverty,
not of resourcefulness, but of access to land.
Simplicity
of necessity but not of design.
Simplicity
of aesthetics; of thrift and scale.
**
Huts
have always been the poor person’s necessity: a need for shelter.
Huts have always been the rich person’s play house: a need for simplicity absent in the lives of those who have inherited or acquired wealth.
Huts have always been the rich person’s play house: a need for simplicity absent in the lives of those who have inherited or acquired wealth.
**
Huts
are a source of tension between the poor (who need them) and the rich (who
covet them).
**
The
history of hutting is littered with aristocrats playing peasant, with artists
playing both.
**
A hut
is neither a retreat nor an attack (both militaristic terms) but symbiotic and
organic.
