This Was Tomorrow

Site Visit Archive

OWCH / New Ground Cohousing

Location: High Barnet, London

THE CONCEPT AND ITS ORIGINS

New Ground is the UK’s first completed senior cohousing project, built for single women over 50. The concept for New Ground was developed by a group of like-minded women who wanted to create a purpose-built development for single women over 50 to live in an inclusive community and provide each other with mutual support. This is unusual framing for cohousing, which has generally been thought of in the context of alternative accommodation in urban areas for young families.

The idea emerged from a 1998 workshop in London where a Joseph Rowntree Foundation research study by Maria Brenton presented the concept of senior cohousing as developed in The Netherlands. A group of six women who already knew each other attended this workshop and decided that they would act on the Dutch example and create their own women’s cohousing community in London. Prime movers were Madeleine Levius and Shirley Meredeen. The first meeting of what became OWCH (Older Women’s Co-Housing Community) met in Shirley’s home in August 1998.

THE LONG FIGHT FOR REALISATION

The path to realisation was neither short nor simple. Housing for Women, a small housing association and charity, was represented at the initial workshop and offered support in developing the concept. In 1999 a formal partnership agreement was made between Housing for Women and the New Ground group. Maria Brenton and Elizabeth Clarson of Housing for Women approached the Housing Corporation (now Homes England) for support, resulting in a Corporation-funded ‘Innovation and Good Practice’ Study to examine the concept of cohousing in the context of British housing. However, few London councils were initially interested in the concept.

Many London sites were explored over the following years – among them buildings in Uxbridge Road, Kentish Town, Wembley and Kingsbury – all without success. The community persisted. In 2002, the Housing Corporation awarded OWCH a Social Housing Grant that was portable across London. However, this funding disappeared over time as the Housing Corporation went on to become the HCA.

For nearly two decades, the group continued to advocate and organise. A crucial turning point came in 2006 when the Tudor Trust, a West London charity, approached Maria Brenton about how the OWCH experiment might relate to their interest in self-determining communities of older people. The Tudor Trust funded Maria’s time and OWCH running expenses for many years, and eventually made a generous capital grant to Housing for Women for the social rental flats when it became clear that conventional Housing Grant would not be forthcoming. The Trust also provided funds to the OWCH group to ensure a high-quality communal setting.

THE DESIGN AND DELIVERY

Hanover Housing Association, a not-for-profit retirement housing provider, eventually acquired the site – a former convent in High Barnet. Hanover’s interest had been encouraged by visits to cohousing schemes in Continental Europe, particularly those documented in the HAPPI Report on older people’s housing (2009). The group chose London-based architects Pollard, Thomas, Edwards (PTE) as their design partners in 2010. Critically, PTE involved the OWCH women in scoping out the site and designing the building, giving them a genuine sense of ownership of the project – unusually collaborative for a development process at that time.

A decisive factor in the granting of planning permission in early 2013 was support from the Director for Adult Social Care, who agreed with OWCH’s argument that a senior cohousing community can actually reduce the need for health and social care services. Local organizations and neighbours were also consulted and supportive.

WHAT WAS BUILT

New Ground consists of 25 self-contained flats ranging between one, two, and three bedrooms, situated around shared facilities and a large garden space. One third of the units (8 flats) are social rent managed by Housing for Women, with the remainder (17) leasehold for owner-occupation. The apartments themselves are generous spaces filled with light. While balconies and other garden-facing spaces connect them to communal areas, the design maintains privacy through kitchens, studies and bedrooms.

The complex includes a large shared communal “cohouse” at the centre – entered not through separate halls but through one shared front door. This spatial arrangement embodies the philosophy: privacy where needed, community where valued. The 25 residents – women ranging in age from 50 to 87, of mixed wealth and ethnicity – create and manage the community actively themselves. All decisions are made consensually. Weekly Monday morning meetings handle practical decisions; monthly meetings make strategic decisions with all members participating.

GOVERNANCE AND SELF-DETERMINATION

New Ground is managed by OWCH (the Older Women’s Co-Housing Community) which, as well as being responsible for management and organising activities, maintains a pool of potential buyers and renters, allocating the social rental units when they become available according to strict eligibility criteria agreed with their social landlord, Housing for Women.

The women have joined OWCH for many reasons – some have become widows or divorced, some never married or their children have flown the nest. They share a deliberate purpose: to live in mutual support, to age together, and to remain connected. When residents reach their 80s, they expect to share not just living facilities but also the cost of care in the future. In the words of one early resident, “When you reach your 80s your friends are becoming less mobile and there’s a possibility of one becoming quite isolated, even if you live in quite a populated area.”

Shirley Meredeen, 84 at the time the building opened and one of only two founding members to see New Ground realised, said: “It’s never been done before, and we will be completely running it ourselves. We are making history, and we are extremely proud. We are not going to be a little ghetto of older people, we want to be good neighbours.”

WHY IT MATTERS

This was the first of its kind in the UK – a purpose-designed, purpose-managed cohousing development for older women. That it took 15 years from first meeting to completion speaks to both the novelty of the model and the structural barriers to community-led housing. The financial model alone was unusual: a confluence of grant funding, charitable support, and social landlord partnership that would be difficult to replicate.

The scheme stands as evidence that cohousing can work for older people, that community care and support is preferable to isolation, and that women in their 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s have the agency and capacity to design and manage their own housing. The careful balance between individual privacy and collective responsibility that the architects achieved – and that OWCH maintains – has become a model for subsequent cohousing schemes.

CONTEXT FOR THIS PROJECT

New Ground represents not just a housing solution but a statement of values: that older women deserve agency, that communities can be deliberately designed and self-managed, that social connection is as important as shelter. The design acknowledges this – the one shared front door, the central cohouse, the wraparound gardens – all architectural decisions that make solitude optional, not inevitable.

Photographically, the project poses questions about thresholds: between private and communal, between individual and collective, between the domestic and the social. What does a space look like where people have consciously chosen to live together? What traces does mutual care leave in a building?

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