Traditional Cottages of County Donegal considers the vernacular architecture of Ireland’s northernmost county with methodical explanations of structures and building techniques common between the eighteenth and early-twentieth centuries. This means an abundance of thatched roofs, hearth heating, and lowered entrance doors among the book’s textual descriptions and many colorful illustrations. Working under the auspices of the Donegal County Council and Under the Thatch, a sustainable tourism company working to safeguard and rehabilitate vernacular architecture, authors Joseph Gallagher and Greg Stevenson endorse “protection, preservation and conservation” as ways of recognizing Donegal’s built heritage (3).

Nearly every page contains a large, color image of a Donegal cottage. With very few exceptions, the book does not break sentences, or even paragraphs, across pages. This organization allows readers to experience a complete presentation of words and illustrations just by opening the book at random. Body text describes cottages in terms of their architectural features and connection to the primarily agrarian lifestyle of the past; caption text tends to invoke the vocabulary of the vernacular architecture tradition at hand. The persistent use of this vocabulary—for example, a Poll an Bhaic or “keeping hole” is a nook built into the hearth wall for storing cookware and other items—gives the close reader an introductory lesson in vernacular architecture without placing undue emphasis on jargon (115). Through such presentation, the book becomes educational, attractive, and quite user friendly, to borrow a term from software design.

The authors use each chapter to thoroughly explore some aspect of the Donegal cottage. The frame of reference shifts between the broad and the minute. An introductory discussion on cottages’ positions in Donegal’s rugged landscape moves into discussions on particular cottage elements—walls, hearths, windows, etc.—before moving outward once again to consider unattached features such as turf stacks and cowsheds. These descriptions allow readers to understand the local knowledge, logic, and skill sets that informed previous generations’ cottage-building techniques. Home orientation cooperated with the local climate, as shown by the practice of building the back of the cottage to face the prevailing wind. Porous building materials such as thatch or clay aided the home’s ability to exchange indoor and outdoor air. The hearth, kept burning for months or even years at a time, centralized the home’s primary functions of comfort and welcome. Remarkably, many of these techniques echo the U.S. Green Building Council’s current Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification standards. Particularly relevant here are the council’s recommendations for the use of local building materials and minimal disturbance of building sites. Yet in the time and place that gave rise to the Donegal cottage, homes were not self-consciously “green.” They were practical, material extensions of the lives being led by the people of the county.

Two critical chapters open and close the book. In both, the central argument seems to be that cottages displaying older architectural techniques should be preserved, either as museum pieces or as homes for individuals who will act as proper custodians of their unique historical character. By extension, homes built or modified outside this framework present an “inauthentic” portrait of the past (159).

The book’s trouble lies in these discussions, which employ a confused definition of what is “traditional” and what is “modern.” Certain social or technological advances are permitted to remain within the traditional aesthetic, while others are rejected. One comparative photo spread illustrates a cottage in Fintown through two photographs, the first in 1990 and the second “after modernisation” (10-11). The image that is understood to represent pre-modernization shows power lines connected to the cottage, as well as a resident riding what appears to be a gas-powered tractor. Also seemingly acceptable are a solar panel nestled within a thatched roof (97), and the reproduction of a Donegal cottage in an outdoor folk museum in upstate New York (171). On the other hand, the meticulous restoration of cottages by German, French, and British holiday homeowners in Donegal are criticized for feeling “less ‘real’ than when they were part of a full-time and vibrant local community” (159).

Traditional Cottages of County Donegal succeeds admirably as a study of regional folklore in a discipline increasingly concerned with global issues, and as a pleasurable volume widely accessible outside scholarly realms. However, its theoretical engagement is somewhat grey, as the authors’ distinctions between the past and the present are never clearly articulated. Both academic and popular readers would benefit from further discussion on the interaction of tradition and variation—of both constructive and destructive sorts—in the contemporary expression of vernacular architecture.

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[Review length: 748 words • Review posted on November 7, 2013]