Springhill Cohousing, Stroud

Staying at Springhill Cohousing felt a little bit like being at home at Earthsong, with the visual similarities and the easy camaraderie of fellow cohousers. I gave a talk after dinner one night about Earthsong, and ripples of recognition met my photos, from the vertical board and batten pitched-roof houses to the swales and pedestrian street. Wry and knowing laughter followed my stories of long meetings, construction challenges and ongoing issues such as the pet policy and cooking rosters!

Springhill started in 2000 when David Michael, a developer and cohousing enthusiast, bought a steep 2 acre site near the centre of Stroud, another very old and quaint English town. People were quickly drawn to the project, including several who had been involved in cohousing groups elsewhere who could see that this one had a good chance of succeeding.

The project had its fair share of construction problems, conflicts and delays, but was completed in 2003, and is still the only new-build cohousing neighbourhood in the UK. 34 houses and apartments are tightly packed along two “streets”, one solely pedestrian and the other accessing the carparks. An overland stormwater system or “SUDS” (Sustainable Urban Drainage System) winds through the site along swales, concrete “rills” and a small pond. Some houses have photovoltaic cells generating electricity from the sun, although only a couple of houses have solar hot water systems.

Inside, the houses are light and spacious. House buyers were able to work with the architects pre-construction to make changes to their house layout, resulting in many different configurations but generally believed to have added considerably to construction costs.

While construction costs rose 70% during construction, people who have since sold on have still almost doubled their investment due to the huge increase in house value even in 3 years. However an agreement was built in from the beginning that any seller must pay 0.5% of the sale price of a house back to the community, a painless contribution on the part of the seller given that most sales occur without the help of a real estate agent, but a significant source of funds for the community to continue to upgrade the common facilities.

Another early agreement that has proved invaluable is the requirement that all residents be part of a cooking team. Cooking is compulsory, eating is voluntary! Careful attention is paid to making sure new or intending residents are fully aware of the cooperative nature of the community, and know they are expected to participate.

I thoroughly enjoyed my stay at Springhill, enjoyed very warm exchanges with several people about our respective communities, and my initial impression that here might be a sister community to Earthsong was borne out. There is some talk of house-sitter exchanges, although the distance and impacts of jet travel make this unlikely to happen often!