Cottageology is an unincorporated non-governmental organisation (aka a club) with donating members.
The club provides advice on how to rework, re-design and live in traditionally-constructed buildings with reference to:
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- Collaborative sharing of knowledge and resources to keep individual costs down
- The principles of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings
- Aims of the Department of Housing’s document “A Living Strategy” to enhance the understanding, minding and handing on of Ireland’s built vernacular heritage
- Use of innovative, sustainable, evidence-based ecological building materials and solutions.
- Encouraging biodiversity and energy efficiency
- Working towards the creation of a network of “Guardians” of traditionally constructed buildings in Ireland, similar to the work of Maisons Paysannes de France.
We organise talks and recordings. In future it’s hoped to have local meetings/training workshops in some counties.
The member donations are used to cover expenses, and you can view what the donations get spent on if you join. You also get access to all the knowledge-base articles, and recordings of talks for a year. You’re asked to donate what you feel you can afford, between €10 and €50. If you don’t want to join, you can still get involved with the free activities – there are about 23,000 people on the facebook group and you can sign up at the website home page to receive free documents by email like our Almanac of suppliers, or list of links, or to attend Zoom talks.