Doagh Famine Village

Doagh Famine Village is an outdoor museum in County Donegal just over half an hour from Derry. The village itself was lived in until about 20 years ago by the family of the man who owns this museum. The displays are mostly under cover due to the amount of rain that falls. This is a seasonal museum, open from the middle of March until the end of October.

Doagh Famine Village follows the history of a family from the 1840s until today. Almost all of the buildings have thatched roofs and are interesting to see. The tour was led by Pat Doherty who started off in the house that he grew up in. I think that it was a shock to many of us that people still lived in houses that dated from the mid 1800s and in conditions that we would find difficult to believe. The people in the area depended on the sea for a lot of their food resources. Mr Doherty gave us a description of how the food was gathered and prepared.

Mr Doherty also gave us a good description of how daily life was like when he was growing up. This was not much different from what his ancestors had experienced in the mid 1800s. The houses were generally simple, a kitchen where most of the household work was done, possibly a parlour where guests would have been entertained. But many a young one would get into trouble when they went in with dirty shoes or clothes. A room for parents to sleep in and usually a loft for the children. There were no bathrooms as we know them. The family washed at the kitchen sink and used an outhouse. Bath night was when the wooden bathtub was hauled out and filled with hot water that had been heated over the kitchen fire. The father of the family would have his bath first, followed by the mother, and then the children from oldest to youngest. Clothes were washed by hand and then dried by wind power.

After Mr Doherty was finished his tour, he told us about some of the other displays that were available including the display showing how the republicans were kept safe from His Majesty’s forces, and the Haunted House. There is even a display for the Travelling People, otherwise known as Tinkers, or in some cases, Gypsies.

The houses each had different displays including a kitchen, a parlour, an Irish wake, and others. It made for an entertaining and educational afternoon. One of my favourite amusements was the Haunted House. After all, I have been through Nightmares in Niagara Falls. Why wouldn’t I go through a mere haunted house?

Would I go again? Yes, I think that I would as history is sometimes hard to understand with one reading or one presentation. The village did have some focus on the Great Famine, but I found that it had more focus on the politics of a violent time period covering the establishment of the Republic and the consequential establishment of Northern Ireland, with its problems and some of the solutions that came from the persistence of the Irish people for peace.