Traditional Irish housing practices provide good examples of how sustainable living is still possible, writes Sarah Marriott.
No hard hats are needed on the smallest building site in Ireland because the traditional house - at the National Museum of Country Life in Co Mayo - is being built from wood, mud and straw. During the first stage of the build, the timber frame looks more like a big bird's nest than a dwelling for humans but by the end of this month skilled craftsmen will have constructed a house using techniques and materials similar to those used by our ancestors.
Sustainable living is not just a 21st-century concept. In many ways, our forefathers were ecologists, using local or renewable resources of earth, stone, straw and wood to build their homes.
"We can learn a lot from the way our ancestors built their bio-degradable houses," says thatcher Brian Rogers, who believes in the evolution of tradition and the "contemporary usability of folklife". Bricks and concrete will survive for thousands of years, he points out, but the natural materials used in vernacular architecture will go back to the earth when the buildings eventually fall down.
Tucked under ancient trees in the museum grounds at Turlough Park, the little house looks as if it is growing out of the earth - and in a way, it is. Native hazel, oak and alder coppiced from woodlands in Co Offaly, Co Wicklow and Co Roscommon are used to make the wooden frame; walls are made of clay and the roof of straw and reeds.
Instead of selecting one house style from a particular era or region, the craftsmen are using their heritage skills to show a variety of cottage types and building methods. Although basically a wattle-and-daub construction of the kind that was dominant in Ireland from the first known settlements at the Céide Fields into the 18th century, a section of the wall is made of mixed river, sea and glacier stones and another from turf sods. It has a beaten earth floor, a traditional cailleach (bed off-shoot) next to the fireplace and the window is from an 1840s workhouse. The thatching, in a variety of styles from Ulster to Wexford, is under way.
The collections on display at the Museum of Country Life are rooted in our rural history, but its philosophy is concerned with linking the past and the present.
"The museum is interested in making the connection between rural traditions and what craftspeople are doing today. It's about the evolution of skills and how they are still relevant to life today," says Deirdre Power, the museum's education and outreach officer. "After the success of last year's currach-building project, we wanted to do something big - and the idea of a scaled-down house evolved from talking to craftspeople involved in the museum's work."
When the cottage is completed at the end of this month, the museum plans to use it as a resource for workshops and future crafts projects. Inside the museum building, the weather-beaten faces of the men, women and children who lived in traditional vernacular houses stare at us from the walls. There are women carrying rocks and men breaking stones for a road in Carracoe in 1898, barefoot women reaping oats in Co Tyrone in 1910 and fisherwomen on the beach in Co Kerry in 1900. What would they think of the crowds of people at Turlough Park fascinated by a little wattle-and-daub thatched cottage at the start of the 21st century?
The craftspeople building the house at the National Museum of Country Life can be seen in action from Tuesday to Saturday until August 23rd. The final of the weekly workshops takes place in the museum next Wednesday, August 20th, at 2.30 p.m. providing an overview of the materials and techniques used in constructing the house. Booking recommended. The National Museum of Country Life is in Turlough, four miles from Castlebar, Co Mayo, on the Dublin road. Tel: 094-9031751.
