---
title: restoration
date: 2026-03-24
tags: []
categories: [general]
status: Published
main_title: Restoration of Two Vernacular Cottages
sub_title: The Owners’ Perspectives
speaker: Lectures by Tara and Geoff Brooks & Elizabeth McBride
long_event_date: Tuesday March 24 2026
location: The Old Museum Building, 7 College Square North, Belfast BT1 6AR
notes: 
pricing: 
map_ref: "https://maps.app.goo.gl/vtrXDApf9aBDYvDK9"
image: /events-images/crucknamara.jpg
---

Our first talk will centre on **Crucknamara Cottage** in Co. Donegal; the contemporary reconstruction of a North-West Irish longitudinal byre house. In the 2010s, Tara and Geoff Brooks undertook an unexpectedly involved rebuild of a traditional vernacular cottage that dated from before the famine. Although the cottage had experienced significant neglect, the Brooks family successfully developed a practical holiday home whilst retaining a traditional building in an area of Donegal increasingly subject to ‘bungalow blight’. The talk will look at the building’s history, its place in the Rosguill Peninsula and the compromises involved in restoring the cottage’s fabric; a feat Tara and Geoff have expertly and sensitively accomplished.

The focus of the second talk will be **Phyllis’s Cottage** in Crumlin. We will learn of the lows and highs of the acquisition and restoration of Norman and Elizabeth McBride’s lough-side gem, managed whilst they were coping with the effects of Brexit, COVID and local bureaucracy. Happily, despite what they describe as their naïve approach, the McBrides have not only kept their sense of humour but are still speaking to each other. They have achieved a magnificent restoration and Phyllis’s Cottage is now enjoying a new lease of life as holiday accommodation.

![](news_images2/phylliss.jpg)