De Valera's Cottage

At Knockmore, outside Bruree in County Limerick, this small labourer's cottage was the childhood home of Éamon de Valera, the Long Fellow, who was born in New York in 1882, sent to Ireland as a young child and raised here, and who went on to lead the country as Taoiseach and serve as its President until 1973. Kilmallock Poor Law Union built it around 1885 under the Labourers Act of 1883, one of many such cottages put up for farm workers' families, and OPW calls it the cradle of his political awakening. It is a detached three-bay, single-storey house with a slate roof, rendered chimneys and walls, two-over-two sash windows and a battened half-door, beside a small outbuilding, with limestone cobbles and rubble walls around its plot. Now a state-owned national monument, it can at present be seen from outside only, through the cast-iron gate. Reviewers find it charming and nicely restored but regret not seeing inside. The De Valera Museum in Bruree village is a separate, community-run place.