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Imagine a community where you like your neighbours. You share meals and your children grow up together. Joanna Moorhead on the growth in cohousing

• Joanna Moorhead
• The Guardian, Saturday 1 May 2010

 

 

The late afternoon sun is casting a rich honey glow over a car-free street of timber-framed houses and a group of mothers are sitting on benches chatting, watching their children play on the adjacent green. From time to time a neighbour, en route home from work, walks by and stops for a chat; later, a bell will ring from the window of one of the houses, and everyone will wander inside for a convivial supper.

This place seems a long way from Britain in 2010 – more like a Scandinavian village, or something left over from rural life in the 19th century. It is, in fact, arguably Britain's most successful cohousing project: Springhill in Stroud, Gloucestershire, home to 85 residents ranging in age from infancy to their 70s. Springhill isn't a kibbutz, nor is it a commune: it's a development of 35 homes, ranging from five-bedroom houses to one-bedroom flats, inhabited by a collection of families, couples and single people (some younger, others retired). Although they have their own homes and their back gardens, residents also share a "common house" for communal meals, as well as a large garden with a splendid three-storey tree house, a chicken-run and a vegetable plot.

"When you get down to it, what we've got is an old-fashioned neighbourhood without cars and with a parish hall where we get together on a regular basis," says Jo Bryden, 40, whose sons, Ciaran, 10, Sean, seven, and 16-month-old Malachy are out enjoying the sunshine. "My husband and I came to live here six years ago. It appealed straight away – we'd never live in a commune, but here you've got your privacy when you want it and there are other people around when you want them, too.

"It's great for the kids because they can run out into the street and the garden, and there are always other children around to play with. In the summer they're outside the whole time – but in the winter it's great too, because they can play in the common house or watch a movie there."

Sarah Lunnon, 45, says Springhill is a great place to live when you've got small children – hers are four, 12 and 13 – because there are other parents around to talk to during the day; it's also great for older kids, who can hang out in the common house when they want to get away from their parents. "And the shared meals are terrific – four nights of the week you don't have to cook if you don't want to. The deal is that everyone has to cook, once a month – and there's a rota for that – but it's not bad getting 15 meals made for you, for every one you have to cook yourself."

She moved to Springhill in 2003 from a terraced house in Wales. "I loved the idea that it was car-free because that makes it a lot more neighbourly. Lots of people here have cars, but they're in the car park at the back of the common house, not outside the houses. And it's great that you get to know your neighbours here so easily.

"You tend to find that you become very close to some people and others are at a bit of a distance, but good to talk to occasionally. We've all bought into this shared vision of how to live, which is important."

The children, say Sarah and Jo, love Springhill – and so do their friends when they visit. "Some children who came here recently said it was like a mini Center Parcs," says Sarah. It's ideal for single children, too. "It's great for Dylan, who is 11," says his mother, Karen Doe. "If we lived in conventional housing he'd be on his own a lot as he's an only child. One thing I've noticed here is that everyone parents everyone else's kids – we all look out for them, and we all tell them how to behave if they need it."

Felicity Warden, 73, moved here about five years ago. She lives alone, but is never lonely. "The shared meals are wonderful for a single, retired person like me – I don't have to cook for myself and there are interesting people to talk to. It's a much more natural way to live than alone on a street where you know no one.

"It's great for grandchildren, too – my two-year-old granddaughter, Julia, came to visit recently and straight away she was making friends and enjoying the big garden."

Springhill was the brainchild of David Michael, a property developer who is – naturally – one of its residents, living with his wife, Helen, in one of the five-bedroomed houses. The couple are recent empty-nesters, their two grown-up daughters having now left home, and they enthuse about the benefits of this way of living at their stage of life – Helen says she didn't realise what a loss her girls would be, and having neighbours' children in and out of her kitchen, as she often does, has helped her to cope.

David was inspired in his vision for Springhill by two Californian architects, Katie McCamant and Chuck Durrett, who call themselves the founders of the modern cohousing movement. They are in Britain to promote cohousing and believe that the Springhill model could spawn many similar set-ups across Britain – a conference last weekend brought together representatives of more than 30 embryonic cohousing groups, with projects planned all over the UK, for example in London, Norwich, Lancaster, Leeds and Fife. With surveys finding that 84% of Britons say they hardly know their neighbours, and one in three people now living alone, they could be on to something. "It's the future, and more people are recognising that," says Chuck.

"It's more and more obvious to people that families have become estranged, that children are being driven miles to playdates, that family units are too isolated and that there isn't enough neighbourly sharing in our communities. The key is always balancing it so that residents have privacy as well as opportunities for community. The truth is that it's easier than a lot of people realise. Also, when a new group is setting up, the vision is in their hands – cohousing can be anything people want it to be, provided they have consensus and funding," he says.

In Stroud, David Michael bought the land – a hillside site 10 minutes walk from the town centre – and sold the houses before they were built at cost price. Three-bed houses went for around £145,000 initially – they are now worth £300-400,000 when they come on the market, which isn't often. From the start, says David, there was a lot of interest.

Residents pay a monthly fee, £10-50 depending on the size of their home, for the upkeep of the common house and shared land. When someone puts their house up for sale, the philosophy of Springhill is clearly explained to prospective buyers. "We strongly encourage them to come and share a meal with us, so they can see what we're about," says David. Incomers are also required to pay 0.5% of their purchase price into a fund for the maintenance of the site and sign a deed of covenant to say they agree to abide by the principles of cohousing.

Katie and Chuck say successful cohousing projects are often due to the commitment of dedicated individuals like David Michael, who see a better way to live and take it upon themselves to build a community of like-minded families and individuals around them. But they believe that many more of us would buy in if the opportunity existed. They first came across cohousing in Denmark, where they studied architecture. "I noticed this development of houses where the people seemed to stop and talk to one another, and sit around outside with their kids playing," says Chuck. This was 25 years ago, and that community was one of the early examples of cohousing: Denmark now has around 450 such projects, plus a further 250 developments geared towards the specific needs of older people.

Chuck says that growing up in cohousing has been wonderful for their daughter, Jessie, now 18. "She's so sociable, so able to deal with a wide range of people because she's been raised in a community." There are intergenerational benefits, too: "You know your children can run around without being in danger, because other people will look out for them, and you know the 85-year-old will be checked up on rather than left on her own all day."

In fact, says Chuck, people in busy midlife – the sort of people who think they haven't got a minute to spend with older neighbours – can be exactly the sort of people who benefit most. "The other day I was leaving for work. It was a busy morning, I'd lost my keys, I was frazzled. I looked across the street as I was setting out and saw my elderly neighbour sitting on her porch. I looked over at her and I could tell that she really wanted me to come over and sit down with her for five minutes. And I knew I couldn't just walk by, so, despite being so up against it, I stopped and chatted. Those five minutes I spent with her put my day, not hers, back into balance. So when I said goodbye, our chat had done us both good … and that's what intergenerational sharing is all about."

Are there any downsides? "Oh, sure there are," says Katie, laughing. "It's not utopia. People drive you crazy sometimes. They come to the residents' meetings and they don't appreciate your brilliant ideas; you feel like you're the person doing all the work and they're not doing enough.

"It's real life! But I'd rather have cohousing, imperfect though it might be, than the alternative where you hardly know the people who live next door."

In Stroud, the verdict seems to be much the same. "Decision-making can take a long time," says Felicity, having struggled to come up with a downside to life at Springhill. "We try to make all our decisions by consensus, and it's a very time-consuming way to do it." Meanwhile, 11-year-old Dylan, Karen Doe's son, is a bit miffed that the group has decided to limit the number of dogs because he'd rather like one. "But on the whole," says Karen, "there's nowhere he'd rather be. He comes home from school, races outside, and there are always friends on tap and a big garden to play in. Who else has that?"

abide by : przestrzegać (czegoś)

adjacent : sąsiadujący

brainchild : pomysł, idea

convivial : towarzyski, serdeczny

deed of covenant : akt umowy

downside : wada

embryonic : embrionalny, w zarodku

empty-nester : osoba, której dorosłe dziecko wyprowadziło się z domu rodzinnego

en route : po drodze (do, z)

enthuse about : entuzjazmować się (czymś)

frazzled : skonany, wykończony

like-minded : podobnie myślący

maintenance : utrzymanie

miffed : urażony, dotknięty

on a regular basis : regularnie

on tap : dostępny

parish hall : ratusz

playdate : kolega do zabawy, dziecko umówione z rówieśnikiem na spotkanie

rota : lista zadań do wykonania

spawn : płodzić, mnożyć

upkeep : utrzymanie, koszty utrzymania

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