Editing Architecture of Ireland (section)

==Vernacular architecture==
The [[thatching|thatched roof]] cottage and [[blackhouse]] have a tradition dating back 9,000 years.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ballybegvillage.com/thatching.html|title=Thatching in Ireland, Thatched Roof, Thatched Cottage, Irish Thatch|last=BallybegVillage.com|website=Ballybegvillage.com|access-date=1 October 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171011005154/http://www.ballybegvillage.com/thatching.html|archive-date=11 October 2017|url-status=dead}}</ref> Now considered quaint, thatched cottages are often rented out for tourists on holidays. A characteristically exuberant vernacular expression is often found in shopfronts throughout Ireland. Patrick O'Donovan has observed that in the nineteenth century there was "a brilliant explosion" of domestic architecture borne of the opportunities that plate glass, Art Nouveau and classical and gothic themes all offered up at the time. "In Ireland", he wrote, "the villages were not the places where people lived, but where they came for supplies and, most regularly, to attend church. Yet the shops did almost everything that the Church could not do, and offered an alternative, perhaps, to the latter's solemnity."<ref>John Murphy, ''Irish Shopfronts'', photographs by John Murphy, with an introduction by Patrick O'Donovan. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981.</ref>