Ballyveagh Farm
/Collections/Buildings/town-buildings/Ballyveagh)
This farm had been home to four generations of the Baird family, until shortly before being acquired by the Ulster Folk & Transport Museum in the late 1980s. The property, built of Mourne granite in the 1840s, was moved from its location in the Mourne Mountains in south County Down.
The farm was typical of the area, with about 10 acres (4 hectares) mixed farming of arable and livestock. The dwelling is a simple two-roomed house, kitchen and bedroom, with a central hearth. The floors are of packed earth with flagstones laid around the threshold and at the hearth where foot traffic is at its heaviest.
At various times the dwelling has been added to by the building of outhouses for farm storage and accommodation for animals and poultry. The farmyard is laid out as a 'street' - a line of buildings, as opposed to a courtyard layout.
A separate outhouse has been refurbished to house a small exhibition on the life and work of Emyr Estyn Evans, onetime Professor of Geography at Queen's University, Belfast, the founder of the University's Institute of Irish Studies and a 'founding father' of the Ulster Folk Museum.
The Museum received generous assistance from the Ulster Folklife Society in acquiring, moving and re-erecting this complex of buildings as a memorial to Estyn Evans.
Original location: Ballyveaghmore townland, Annalong, County Down
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