Cloughjordan, a small rural village in the north of County Tipperary, is known as the birthplace of the poet and patriot Thomas McDonagh. Now it is the birthplace of Ireland’s first ecovillage.
Consisting of 130 new homes of various kinds on 67 acres, that will include a working farm, ‘The Village’, as it is now known, will become part of the town of Cloughjordan.
Curious, I visited recently on an open day to see what they were about, and to attend a guided tour and workshop led by Davie Philip, education officer of Cultivate and a founder member of The Village.
In the 20th century, there were communes (cultural experiments), collectives (with a political emphasis), and ‘intentional communities’, which often had a spiritual focus. The 21st century answer to globalisation, climate change, and the new world order is, at least in part, ecovillages.
Ecovillages are urban or rural communities of people who strive to combine a supportive social environment with a low-impact way of life. To achieve this, they integrate various aspects of ecological design, permaculture, ecological building, green production, alternative energy, community building practices, and much more.
They seek to be as self-sufficient and as resilient as possible in food and energy. They exist all over the world, and many act locally while linking globally with others.
According to Helena Norberg-Hodge, Director of ISEC (The International Society for Ecology and Culture) “The movement to create ecovillages is perhaps the most comprehensive antidote to dependence on the global economy. Around the world, people are building communities that attempt to get away from the waste, pollution, competition and violence of contemporary life.”
Cloughjordan
The town of Cloughjordan has a broad main street, with a tree-lined square at its mid-point. Main Street features a post office, a library, ten shops (including a butcher with his own farm, a pharmacy and a cycle shop), a garage, a restaurant, four pubs, a ‘chipper’, a fire station, sports clubs, two surgeries, two schools and three churches (Catholic, Methodist and Church of Ireland), and a book/ coffee shop (Sheelagh na Gig)– one of five shops which have opened since the town was chosen as the site of this project, providing real evidence of rural regeneration.
Sheelagh na Gig, run by two ecovillage members, offers delicious coffee and chocolates and interesting books. To my surprise, they also have their own local currency, the Sheelagh na Gig, a paper bill which can be bought for a euro and used for local purchases.
Opposite the square is the entrance to the ecovillage, right in the heart of the town, integrating the established community with the new, both architecturally and socially. The project will substantially enlarge the existing town, which had a population of 431 in 2002.
Only the portion of the site close to the existing town will be built upon; most of the remainder will be farmed for community-supported agriculture. The Village’s 130 buildable sites will include apartments, terraces, semi-detached, detached and live/ work units. They range in size from multi-family sites up to sites for detached homes of approximately one fifth of an acre each.
The new village’s idealistic founders– Philip, Gavin Harte, and Greg Alan, were looking for a place with existing resources and community assets to build upon, to renew a place that was in decline, rather than to start afresh.
Forward thinking Cloughjordan leaders saw their ad in the ‘Farmers’ Journal’ and contacted them about what their village had to offer. There was a long process of consultation with local people before planning permission was submitted and approved.
The Village residents are referred to as ‘members’ and go through an interviewing process. They must subscribe to a legally-binding member agreement and the project’s ‘ecological charter’, which specifies construction and operations guidelines for energy efficiency, heating, biodiversity, water and waste management, and maintenance of a healthy indoor environment, among other things.
There is a district heating system, and buildings will be oriented for maximum solar exposure. Once on board, members share equally in the Village’s collective governing structure.
The Coach House at the entrance to the development is being renovated to become the project’s first Community Building.
The first residents of the community will live in a row of traditional style lime-hemp townhouses. Construction started in February 2009. One of these townhouses is still available for sale. Prices start at €41,000 for an apartment site. The average site price is €86,000 (excluding council charges and a community development charge).
Members also have access to over 50 acres of community land and infrastructure. Facilities include children’s play areas, garden allotments, community buildings, landscaped parkland, an organic farm and orchards. All homes are connected to the district heating system that supplies hot water for heating and household use. It’s generated by solar panels and wood chip boilers. Ducting is in place to supply fibre optic broadband to all homes.
The Village will encourage the use of public transport, car-pooling, community transport schemes, cycling and walking as modes of transportation. Individual parking will be limited to one space per household. Roads will be downsized in order to promote the concept of home-zones. Mendes Go Car, a car-sharing operation, has also established a presence in the community. In addition, to farming, a tree nursery, featuring 100 varieties of apple trees, has been established.
Around the town is a rolling landscape of rich agricultural land and fine cycling country. A nearby beech wood offers pleasant walks, while Lough Derg and the Shannon are within 20 kilometres, as are the Slieve Bloom and Silvermines mountains.
Eco-Enterprise Centre gets green light
Enterprise Ireland has announced grant funding for the construction of an innovative eco-enterprise centre located in the Village project. The Enterprise Centre will provide an incubation space for new green business, providing community enterprise workspace infrastructure, which clusters a number of manufacturing and service businesses within the common theme of eco-entrepreneurship.
Through the promotion of new green business, the eco-enterprise centre will play a key part in developing a sustainable local economy in Cloughjordan
Ireland’s first Community Supported Agriculture scheme begins in Cloughjordan
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a new model of food production and distribution that aims to improve the quality and quantity of food available locally while reducing the environmental impact of producing this food. CSA consists of a community of individuals who pledge support to a farm operation so that the farmland becomes, either legally or spiritually, the community’s farm, with the growers and consumers providing mutual support and sharing the risks and benefits of food production.
CSA farms are funded by subscriptions where members receive a weekly basket of vegetables, fruit, eggs or any type of farm produce. CSA also creates synergy between growers and producers, with grain produced for local bakers and milk for cheese-makers, resulting in a democratic and integrated food production system, leading to employment and local food security.
In partnership with the residents of Cloughjordan, members of the Ecovillage have began farming an initial 40 acres of land. Work on the first of the farm buildings is beginning soon and the first crop on Ireland’s first CSA scheme will be harvested in Spring.
To book a place on the experience day, or for further information about becoming a member, please contact Dave on 0505-42833 or sales@thevillage.ie.
Part of a Global Network
Cloughjordan is a member of the Global Ecovillage Network, a global confederation of people and communities that meet and share their ideas, exchange technologies, develop cultural and educational exchanges, directories and newsletters, and are dedicated to restoring the land and living ‘sustainable plus’ lives by putting more back into the environment than they take out.
Their website states that ‘We envision a planet of diverse cultures of all life united in creating communities in harmony with each other and the Earth, while meeting the needs of this and future generations’.
Network members include large networks like Sarvodaya (11,000 sustainable villages in Sri Lanka); EcoYoff and Colufifa (350 villages in Senegal); the Ladakh project on the Tibetian plateau; ecotowns like Auroville in South India, the Federation of Damanhur in Italy and Nimbin in Australia; small rural ecovillages like Gaia Asociación in Argentina and Huehuecoyotl, Mexico; urban rejuvenation projects like Los Angeles Eco Village and Christiania in Copenhagen; permaculture design sites such as Crystal Waters, Australia, Cochabamba, Bolivia and Barus, Brazil; and educational centres such as Findhorn in Scotland, Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales, Earthlands in Massachusetts, and many more.
A subsection of the Global Ecovillage Network is The European Ecovillage Network at www.gen-europe.org. They list 435 linked communities worldwide, and advertise their courses and opportunities for visitors and volunteers. This is certainly a welcome development, and one to watch.
Image: The Sheelagh na Gig