Famine cottage blighted by New York winter

A UNITED STATES tribute to the fortitude of the Irish people during the potato famine has closed after less than a year because it failed to withstand a New York winter.

The 19th century stone cottage that originally stood in Ballina, Co Mayo, was dismantled brick by brick last July and reconstructed in Lower Manhattan as the centrepiece of the Irish Hunger Memorial Park.

Despite surviving nearly 200 years of miserable West of Ireland weather, it was unable to last a single bitter winter in north east America.