Welcome to the Homepage of The Hollies - a centre for training in Practical Sustainability on about 30 acres near Castletown-Kenneigh, Enniskeane, in West Cork.
It is owned by An Baile Dulra Teoranta, a non-profitmaking company with charitable status for the educational work it promotes.
It aims to create working examples of what a sustainable society might look like in the areas of housing, energy, gardening, economics and community development. Since 1999, two families have been developing educational programs and putting in place examples of various natural building techniques and inspiring, productive and educational gardens and woodlands.
View our programme of courses for 2008, which will include an opportunity to study cob building with renowned cob building teacher Ianto Evans, as well as many other courses.
We are also developing sustainability programs for local schools. A pilot project - Living with One Planet - was successfully completed between February and June 2006 with funding from West Cork Leader. We have been granted funding for extending this module in order to work with more schools in 2008 which includes partnerships between Irish primary schools and schools in Mexico, Ecuador and Kenya where we have partner projects. We are also preparing teacher training modules for primary and secondary schools.
We are open to volunteers, so if you would like to stay here for a period of time (min. 2 weeks), and learn how to build with cob and other sustainable living skills, do get in touch with us.
We hope that you enjoy this site and we welcome any feedback. We hope to see you on one of our courses.