Hockerton Housing Project

This small community of 5 houses and small farm near Newark, Nottinghamshire, was initiated by Nick Martin, the builder of the “autonomous house” for well known eco-architects Brenda and Robert Vale in a nearby village. He and other members who came together to develop the project worked with the Vales to design these highly energy efficient houses. Approached down a country lane, what you first see are fields, sheep, a couple of wind generators in the distance, and the glimpse of a large pond beyond a grassy hill. Our tour guide Simon led us to the top of this hill, to see that the south side was a huge glass slope, and we were in fact standing on top of his bedroom!

The 5 single story houses are joined end-to-end in one long building, earth-bermed on 3 sides and with a glass conservatory along the entire south face. Life-size model sections of the construction in the nearby office building show the extremely thick concrete in the floors and walls, and the very deep roof structure including 500mm of insulation with the concrete and soil above, keeping the indoor temperature of the houses at an even 21 degrees C. Two wind turbines and an array of photovoltaic cells, combined with houses that use only 10% of the UK average energy use of a conventional house, mean that they are net exporters of electricity to the grid. They are self-sufficient in water and treat all wastewater on site, grow a large proportion of their food on site, and run a small educational and consultancy business based on their experiences.

Hockerton Housing have always had economic sustainability as one of their goals, to be achieved through a combination of low costs and income generation. There is a requirement that all residents spend one day a week on community work, split equally between work in the gardens and farm, for which the reward is fresh food, and work on income generation projects such as the educational tours, workshops, publications and consultancy. Households take turns of one month each to make their house available for visits by the tours.

Tours such as mine are charged out at £50/hour (although they lowered that to £30/hour for me to allow for the kiwi low-exchange-rate factor). Members receive the same rate of pay for all types of work done (currently £15/hour), and when the income per month is not sufficient to pay for the hours, the payment is reduced accordingly or some residents defer their payment. While the shared income-generation aspects of this project might imply a closer cooperation between community members than in other communities I've visited, I got the impression that in other respects they remain relatively independent of each other and there is not the thriving community life that you find in for instance cohousing communities. Their shared building contains the office and meeting/education room, not shared living space. The differences may be partly a factor of the small number of households.

The residents of Hockerton are all highly skilled professional people, and their combined skills have resulted in an attractive and admirable project. They produce well-designed information sheets and other publications, and have an ongoing commitment to contribute their learning. They are now in the process, having built their houses and infrastructure and with well-established systems, of reassessing their collective vision about going forward.