Becoming an 'Eco'- Life at Cloughjordan Ecovillage

By Kath Baker

In March I was lucky enough to be invited to Cloughjordan Ecovillage to take part in a Community Climate Coach Training. I have long since been fascinated by community living and have often dreamed of what my ideal community would be like. Cloughjordan had taken on an almost legendary status in my mind, seemingly providing solutions to so many of the challenges that I had seen and experienced with community living, such as the need for autonomy and personal space, but wanting to have access to shared resources, locally grown food and a network of like minded people. 

In the late nineties, a group of environmentalists living in Dublin started incubating an idea for an ecovillage. A community where people with a shared vision for a sustainable future could build low impact houses, set up regenerative livelihoods, share collective resources and create a blueprint for sustainable living for the rest of Ireland. Sustainable Projects Ireland LTD, the group that formed to carry and implement the vision, pitched the idea to the public in 1999. The response was positive and the search for land began. 

Cloughjordan (Cloch Shiurdáin) is a small town, in the North-western part of Tipperary, close to the border with County Offaly. The town holds an 800 year connection with the kingdom of Jordan, ever since a crusading knight brought back a stone from the Holy Land (Cloch means stone or castle). Today the ‘friendship stone’ , gifted by the Jordanian government as a piece of public art, sits at the threshold between the town and the ecovillage to commemorate this relationship. By the early noughties, its population had fallen into a steady decline, reduced to just a few hundred, with many of its young people choosing to move away to neighbouring cities with greater opportunities for work and play. Local schools were struggling, local pubs and shops couldn’t easily sustain themselves with the scant population. The town was dying. 

With 50 new dwellings under construction, the Ecovillage brought with it an influx of people, many of whom rented houses in the town. And although initially met with some wariness and bemusement from the locals, the schools started to fill up, trade increased at local businesses, new enterprises emerged and the pubs began to buzz again. Its close proximity to the town and its open gate policy helped with integration and locals were welcomed to come and have access to the recreation fields, the newly planted woodlands and to participate in community activities organised by the new residents. Now the ‘Ecos’ as they are known locally, are well integrated into the Cloughjordan community. Watch this Undercurrents Video filmed at the time that planning had first been granted to find out what the locals really thought about the arrival of the 'Ecos'.

A walk around the site reveals many features carefully designed to both care for the land and the people who access it. The houses have been built in neighbourhoods, each with its own community garden or green space. Every privately owned plot also includes a small garden for personal recreation and growing. Each house is connected to the district heating system, and owners pay a monthly share for access to heating and hot water from the centralised wood chip boiler. The houses themselves are diverse, taking in a range of building styles including cob, straw bale and timber frame kit houses. Some of the houses have now installed solar PV and have taken their energy consumption off grid. 

As part of their commitment to biodiversity and safeguarding Ireland’s natural heritage, 17,000 native trees have been planted, creating a zone 5 spanning one third of the site. Hidden deep in the woodland is a hidden labyrinth, encouraging visitors to take a contemplative walk around its grassy curves. Located between the community allotment plots and willow arched sensory and wildlife garden is the apple tree walk, in which you are flanked by Irish heritage apple trees, some ancient varieties which were on the brink of extinction, possibly deservedly according to residents’ reports of their unremarkable flavour.

Consensus decision making has informed every step of the evolution of the ecovillage from its location, design and operation. Everyone who lives at the ecovillage becomes a member of Sustainable Projects Limited and signs an ecological charter, which has been co-created to ensure that all building and energy consumption on site meets an agreed environmental standard. The success of this is evidenced by the average eco-villager footprint being 2gha, less than half the global footprint of the average Irish person. 

As one would expect from a project of this scale, the ecovillage has faced many challenges along the way. The economic crash of 2008, forced half of the investors to withdraw from the project. Despite this they still managed to pull enough resources together to secure the land and begin the construction of 50 of the planned 133 housing units within a year of this setback. 

Cloughjordan Community Farm

Cultivate

Would I choose to live at Cloughjordan Ecovillage? Possibly, yes. I found it an infectiously warm place, full of people who are committed to a vision of a more sustainable and nourishing life, with a seemingly unlimited supply of pesto. Who wouldn’t want to be around that?  I am somewhat daunted by the prospect of building my own house, most of which seemed to be more suited to housing a large family, but am interested in the social housing solutions that are being developed.