I worked with Charlie briefly on the community hub building at Lammas, and not only is he a top bloke, but a fantastic example of how someone with relatively little experience can create the most amazing building. It really is the nicest reciprocal frame roundhouse that I’ve seen. It’s beautifully detailed, and has some amazing craftsmanship within it.
Charlie’s House
by Steve Byrne | Sep 17, 2012 | smallholding | 5 comments
5 Comments
Submit a Comment
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
I love the reciprocal frame roundhouse house Steve.
One thing that really annoys me is how working class people are restricted from living in the countryside. Most people can only dream of living on a smallholding.
I find that the downside of rural living is the isolation and struggling on your own. Building sustainable housing would get rid of this isolation. The house in the video could be a blueprint for the future? I hope so anyway.
Thanks for sharing it with us.
I know – I couldn’t possibly have ever afforded a house in the village where I grew up for 25 years, and certainly the planning laws would have stopped me from doing something like this. We got lucky with this place because the land isnt great and the cottage was too much work for most people.
You wouldn’t believe how many people want to do this, and the numbers will only go up. Although Charlie’s place was “only” £15,000, that puts it at the quite expensive end of the scale. For really low cost builds,look at Simon Dale’s places. He did his first couple for about £3000 each, and the most recent is lovely. Ironically once building control got involved, it cost the same amount to comply with regs as it did to build the house in the first place. No wonder people are trying to work under the radar.
The reason I support Lammas (www.lammas.org.uk) is that they are the best hope that people can live and work in the countryside, and stop even more of it turning into somewhere that only the affluent minority can live.
Come the revolution we’ll all be in roundhouses….
Thats http://www.simondale.net
What do you think of ‘Eco villages’ Steve? There’s quite a few in Ireland and Britain.
Another thing I have noticed is the amount of derelict housing in rural Ireland. Surely these could be renovated or new houses built in their place? Maybe even make some of them into craft works to create rural jobs? There are very few jobs here in West Cork.
Thanks for telling us about Lammas.
We were part of what was Lammas 2, another group of families working with Lammas to create another ecovillage, but then several of us got impatient, found plots, and we nearly bought land alongside another family, but then found this property in NI, and decided to stay here, what with the baby coming.
We went to look at Cloughjordan in Tipp, but it wasn’t for us – a bit modern and too like a housing estate.
Lammas is a great model – its not a commune, more a village in the tradtional way, although not very big. The original idea was for 20+ homes, but the locals wouldn’t have it, and it ended up being 9.
I love the idea, but rules always make me wary, as does being dependent on other people, so that was always what made me think twice.
John from the Turnip House – http://turniphouse.blogspot.co.uk/ was wanting to go round photographing the derelict places – on our road, there must be 8 or 10 lovely little places with barns and yards, that are like the one we bought, and would make brilliant homes. All they need is half an acre for some veg and they’d be ideal. I’m determined to get pictures of some of them and find out who owns them too – there’s one up over the hill here that was lived in by an old fella who had kerosene lamps and a well, no electric; and he’s no family so the house is sitting empty for years but its in good nick.
People just want to buy them as sites and then build those bloody awful standard buff coloured bungalows. You can tell how rare it is to do up an old cottage by the fact that we made the local paper when we did.
There is a brilliant series of short videos about eco villages and Lammas, and what have you at http://www.livinginthefuture.org and it cheers me up immensely to know that there are people out there doing something interesting and not playing along with the rest of the country. There are a good few here in Ireland, though a bit harder to find.