[Title of book] The XUAL Community: From Earliest Articles of

Association To Its Last Days

[Section] Chapter Five
Until their sodden bed was dug up
They lay in immutable slumber
The same patch of earth that later
Gave up cabbages and cucumber.
(~The ballad of Kilmatogh, 1984.)
From the 1960's onwards, there was thirst for societal improvement,
with many people speculating that if society could be completely
reorganized, it would be regenerated and, ultimately, perfected. It's
fairly reasonable to assume Malcolm Cassin wanted his XUAL
Community at Kilmatogh to be a 'perfected society' with a communal
flavour while also trying to achieve a culture that was distinct and
not imitative of any in Europe.
This idea of a perfect society intertwined with communalism can be
traced back to Platos Republic, the book of Acts in the New
Testament, and the work of Sir Thomas Moore. In the XUAL
Community Planning Document, we learn that the Community
shared some of its facilities in a communal way. Among these were
its hugelkultur (self-fertilizing raised beds) for basic food growing
needs; its bath houses; a Meditation Centre and laboratory. All of
which were essential for the successful operation of the Community.
Local farmers reported the Community implemented 'hugelkultur'
almost before they built their first dwelling homes on the bog. The
reason for this early start was because the hugel beds would have a
chronic shortage of nitrogen for the first few years, so they couldn't
plant annual vegetables until the beds were fully established. The
Community could, however, plant potatoes, beans, lettuces and
perennial vegetables. Within three or four years, the beds were ready
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Association To Its Last Days
for squash and broccoli as well.
Hugelkultur is a highly productive system unlike any other gardening
system typically found in Ireland. Not only do these raised beds build
up their moisture and fertility content over time, they provide an
ideal growing space for annual and perennial garden plants. The way
the Community built their hugel beds was straightforward enough:
They built a bank of tree branches, logs, dead leaves and grass,
underneath any biomass they could get their hands on (like
newspapers, skins, eggshells and food scraps).
Once collected, a layer of topsoil was spread over the pile and
seedlings were then planted. However, making enough hugel beds to
accommodate all the food growing needs the XUAL Community
required used up a lot of wood. Luckily for them, the bog in
Kilmatogh had an abundance of trees and untreated wood debris that
could be utilized for this purpose!
Putting together the hugelkultur system meant copying the natural
order for decomposing materials in the real world. Think about the
forest floor and the way that leaf litter and debris stacks on top of
fallen trees and reproduce a system like this: First layer: thick logs
and sturdy twigs; Second layer: dry material like dead leaves or
straw; Third layer: wet organic material like fresh grass clippings;
Fourth layer: fresh compost and manure; and Top layer: topsoil.
There are many reasons why hugel beds were used at Kilmatogh
instead of other forms of gardening: The set up caused the starchy
woods to break down slowly, releasing nutrients to the plants over
the course of twenty years. Even better, heat produced from the
composting wood kept the soil temperature warmer and allowed
plants to be keep alive longer into the cold season. Second, the soil
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[Title of book] The XUAL Community: From Earliest Articles of

Association To Its Last Days
would become full of oxygen because of the gaps left from the
decomposing wood, preventing compaction that required tilling.
Furthermore, the structure of a hugel bed causes the bottom log layer
to both suck up water and slowly release nutrients into the soil over
several years, meaning that the Community didnt need to water or
fertilize it very often, if at all.
The other facilities in the settlement included bath houses, a
Meditation Centre and a laboratory. These structures were built with
more longevity in mind than the dwelling houses. Their
foundations were simple blocks resting on subsoil and required
levelling of the ground.
They are built in such a way that should our Community in
Kilmatogh come to an end, the structures can be dismantled
and the ground returned to a natural non-inhabited state.
(Excerpt from the XUAL Community Planning
Document, filed in 1974 and printed with permission from
Leitrim County Council Planning Authority)
Cassin tells us in the XUAL Community Planning Document that the
bath houses were built on platforms made from joists sitting on
stones on the subsoil exposed by the levelling process. There was
minimal insulation in the building, so they were not energy efficient
due to heat loss, although apparently the structures served their
purpose very well.
The meditation centre was built to make the space more functional
for recreation, running courses, visitor hosting and as a centre for
consciousness studies by resident members. It had a much greater
thermal efficiency than the bath houses and was similar in shape to
the dwelling houses (i.e. It was a geodesic dome). Cassin tells us that
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[Title of book] The XUAL Community: From Earliest Articles of

Association To Its Last Days
it was approximately sixty feet wide by twenty one feet tall at its
highest point.
The communal laboratory, on the other hand, was built from wood
twenty five feet wide by sixty feet long and clad in shingles painted
with bitumen. There was minimal insulation, although the structure
allowed for passive solar heating thanks to its black bitumen exterior
surfaces. It was built on a platform made from upright wooden posts
driven into the ground supporting joist beams and floorboards. Its
shape and size differed considerably from the geodesic domes and
had a roof whose apex was said to be high enough to accommodate a
second floor which was used as a herbarium to grow specialized
plants.
The structures built on the Kilmatogh bog presumably complied with
local planning authority regulations as well as providing
infrastructure for running educational courses and training seminars
for Community members and visitors alike who shared their ideals.
These included mainly people interested in alternative ways of living
and also students, artists, and fringe scientists.
There is no evidence to suggest that the XUAL Community
implemented a system of communal free love, unlike the hippie
movement. Free love was very strong in 20th Century social
movements, which sought consequence-free sex for pleasure, where
any member was free to have sex with any other who consented, and
where possessiveness and exclusive relationships were frowned
upon.
Due to the difficulty in obtaining contraceptives in Ireland at the
time, the natural outcome of sexual intercourse was pregnancy. And,
as far as we know, the XUAL Community members' communal
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Association To Its Last Days
responsibility did not extend to raising children.
Communal Experiments
All XUAL Community members were engaged in scientific
experimentation, each according to his or her own training and
capabilities. Women did as much experimenting as the men,
embracing all kinds of fringe research. They were expected to be pretrained in the scientific method, to be able to write reports, collate
data and utilize marginalized people that society wanted nothing to
do with: the drunks, drug addicts, and the homeless.
Although project management tended to remain with an individual
member (Malcolm Cassin, for example, held this post throughout the
life of the Community), their findings were never published in any
scientific (or even pseudo-scientific) magazines of the day. What we
know of their experiments was that they engaged in predominantly
communal psychological testing. They used psychoactive drugs and
even cooked up their own narcotic ingredients in their laboratory.
It was this last communal activity which eventually brought them
into conflict with the law, and led to the ultimate end of the
Community at Kilmatogh under tragic circumstances. We'll take a
look at that in our next chapter.

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