Three houses were built originally as a school. They were built by the Cosby estate, but they changed their minds and made them into three cottages…The man living here before us was called Mick Welch, and everybody still calls it Mick Welch’s house, or they did for years, they would say “oh, you are the girl who lives in Mick Welch’s house”. Another thing that really attracted us to the hose, apart the fact we loved it at first sight was that a First World War soldier had scratched his name and his number and the date on one of the bricks in 1917. Home is always more than a physical structure. It is also a territory providing shelter, safety and security, and a space for the display of identity, time-deepened and memory qualified. Sense of identity is evident in how homes are configured, furnished and utilised by family members. In Stradbally, the values of cosiness and homeliness were prioritised by all of our participants, regardless of tenure-type. They liked comfortable furnishings, open fires and stoves, traditional rather than modern ‘looks’: We tried to keep it as authentic as possible. Not to make too many changes, because, like you say home is home. I love sitting by the stove in winter, it’s very cosy. It’s a very cosy house in general. We like a homely kitchen, not a clinical kitchen. A homely kitchen where we can loll about. My home is an old-fashioned home….I have all old furniture in my house, and I have no intentions of ever getting rid of it. Now I know that whoever comes after me probably wouldn’t give you tuppence or it, but I love old furniture. Carpets make the house homelier I find. You don’t want to hear people walking around. You could go in there and walk around and there’s no one would hear you. I don’t like wooden floors. It’s cosy, yeah it is quiet, it’s very lived in because I tend to clutter a little bit. I’m a bit of a hoarder gatherer a little bit, to my husband’s annoyance! 55