*It's happening!* Lancaster Cohousing has bought the Halton Gorge site.

It's a beautiful site with a south facing slope down to the River Lune a perfect spot to create our exciting eco cohousing development. The project will comprise private homes, community facilities, workshop/office space and shared outdoor space. It will be built on ecological values in partnership with our architects, Ecoarc. Over the next few months the group will be working with the architects to design the site and homes before building work can commence. We hope to move in April 2012.

The Courtyards Community comprises 5 units within a converted school on the outskirts of Bradford on Avon. Each unit is self-contained. We share the use of 8 acres of land and a wonderful communal hall. Other shared facilities include a tennis court, swimming pool and orchard. This year, all types of fruit were particularly in abundance.

Most residents work off-site (at least for some of the time), but we get together for a full day's work once a month. Jobs we've taken on over the last few months have been painting, turf-laying, tree-planting, garden-building, rock-shifting, grass-cutting, sewage-composting, tree-cutting and some other building and development projects. We always end up sharing a meal together. We've recently instigated a formal method of accounting for the different availability of each resident for additional communal work.

Communal facilities are used regularly by groups which include people from outside the community. Examples have been the monthly dance: 'The Wave', a book club, meetings of the Woodcraft Folk, WWOOF days, camping, private parties and weddings.

In 2005, we celebrated the 10th anniversary of the original conversion of Frankleigh House into living units. This project subsequently became "The Courtyards Community" and "Frankleigh Co-Flats".

CoFlats Stroud is a community made up of 14 private self contained flats. There is a small common house on 2 floors and a shared laundry.

The Common house is for residents and friends to socialise, cook communal meals, organise events, hold residents meetings to run the common aspects of CoFlats or just hang out and have a cup of coffee whilst the laundry is done next door.

Thundercliffe, an eighteenth century mansion house with service wings and stable block, set in 22 acres of mixed park land and woodland on the Sheffield/Rotherham border in South Yorkshire celebrated its 20th anniversary as a co-housing institution in May 2000.

The initial participants, the majority of whom still live at the Grange, were mainly local government officers who, together with friends and family, formed the company "Thundercliffe Grange Ltd." to purchase the Grange, a former residential home for physically and mentally handicapped children, from Sheffield Health Authority and to convert it into self-contained flats together with areas for communal use.

There are twelve flats - some occupied by single people the others by families, in total some two dozen occupants ranging in age from 2 to 65. There is no specific ideology which defines the group and every effort is made to preserve the privacy and autonomy of individuals while sharing the benefits (and the work and expense) of the house and its grounds. The land, apart from the kitchen garden and ornamental gardens adjacent to the house, comprises woodland and park land and is managed in such a way as to enhance the habitat for birds, animals etc.The ground floor of the main building provides communal areas such as workshop, dining room and laundry.

The Community Project is a group of people who have jointly purchased a site on the edge of the small village of Laughton in East Sussex. There are 3 large buildings that have been converted into 16 family houses and 4 new houses have also been built. The 23 acres of land and a small number of other buildings on the site provide communal facilities for the group.
Whilst maintaining the privacy of individual homes, the aim of the group is to live co-operatively, jointly managing the land and communal facilities, informally sharing skills and support and generally enjoying each other's company.

There is no one specific ideology which defines the group, but we are all keen on a spirit of community. We do not want an institutionalised feel, but we do want to be more than simply a housing estate. We want to live next door to people we know and trust. Read more about the Community Project, or contact us, via the links below.

For those interested in in finding out more about the community, as well as media enquiries contact Sarah Berger via her form or

• The Community Project
• 15 Laughton Lodge
• Laughton
• East Sussex BN8 6BY

Tel: 01323 815727 (voice mail-please leave a message)

For more information on the Community project, click here.
Or, to download a case study on the CP, right click here

The website of the Canadian cohousing network: excellent stuff here.