A blackhouse is a traditional type of house once common in Ireland, the Hebrides and the Scottish Highlands, built with double walled dry stone construction and an earthen core between the walls. Its roof was thatched and its central hearth had no chimney, so smoke escaped through the roof itself, blackening the interior, one proposed source of the name, though an alternative explanation traces it to confusion between the Gaelic words for black and for thatch. On the Isle of Lewis the term specifically distinguished older blackhouses from newer white houses built with rendered stone walls, and the buildings commonly served a dual purpose, housing people and livestock at opposite ends of a single shared space.
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