September 2025
The usual very busy month.
Much background progress has been made on our landscaping plans. But some hard physical work also resulted in something more obviously visible: the creation of the first of several keyhole gardens. We’re looking forward to planting them up in due course!
For a long time we’ve held a variety of social events on a regular basis. Yoga on Thursday morning and Pop-up-pub on Friday evening. Recently one of our members has added to the roster with shared meals each Tuesday evening. A couple of our members attended a workshop on the crafting of willow and paper lanterns, and will in turn skill us up for a local lantern festival that’s coming up. We’ve also started regular craft sessions with a few aims: to contribute to a Cloak of Peace; and to create wall hangings for our (currently) acoustically challenged Main Room.
Last month we watched a number of the Women’s Football World Cup games, with many of us biting our fingernails during the England-Spain final. This month it was the turn of the Women’s Rugby World Cup. I’m a Kiwi, so I was mildly disappointed that the Silver Ferns only achieved Bronze this year. But at least the Red Roses triumphed in the end! We also had a showing of F1 highlights and of Strictly…
Mid-month, a number of us decamped to Shirle Hill Cohousing, for their 12th birthday party. Wow! Lots of friends, lots of kids, lots of lovely noise, lots of yummy food. A couple of us then went of from there to On the Brink Cohousing, which was hosting a Philosophy in the Pub session, as part of the Nether Edge Festival. All happening.
Towards the end of the month, we were pleased to welcome Owen Jarvis, CEO of the UK Cohousing Network, to our community. Owen had been on a Great Northern Expedition, which included a two-day conference in Leeds at which Rachel, our company secretary, spoke. We shared food and good wide-ranging conversation.
January – August 2025
Many apologies that we haven’t done an update in a very long time. Plenty of updates but not enough time to report them!
Our corner, transformed from something like a builder’s tipping ground to a lovely little garden. We’re looking forward to watching it grow. Thanks, team.
Our last resident moved in in mid-February. We’ve been working really hard to get things organised, and to make sure everyone’s voice is heard. The landscaping group has been meeting with a lot of people to try to work out the best way to lay out our outside areas. We’ve got a climbing frame and trampoline for the kids, and a nice flat lawn outside our common house. I’m sure there’s a very, very long list of important things that I’ve missed!
CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR 2024/5 Our first festive season in our new homes has been a lovely landmark. Our fantastic housing co-op, Share Instead cooked us all a wonderful 3 course Yule feast before we started our Christmas celebrations with our own families and/or neighbours. New Year was equally memorable with another feast followed by a quiz of the year and games, organised splendidly by 2 of our young members. January snow has seen us hunkering down and testing the efficacy of our air source heat pumps (great so far!). Some serious igloo building provided by our brilliant children……
AUGUST 2024. Nearly all our households have now moved in. We’re busy building our community and working hard, with much digging and preparing the soil for planting. A Lego workshop with our children helped us plan the area around our homes so that we include important child friendly features in our landscape planning. Still very much a work in progress, but it feels great to be settling in.
We’re enjoying chatting with some of the dog walkers and neighbours using Spider Park and being able to join in with local community events. Two of our members even managed to win prizes at the marvellous Wisewood Horticultural Society Annual Show!
We helped the Council Parks & Countryside Department to plant some wild flowers on the bit of Spider Park outside our fence that got churned up during the very wet months of our build and it’s been good to see them start to come through.
As at August 2024, our final property remaining for sale is now under offer so we hope to be able to announce soon that our community is complete. We have a waiting pool of people who want to be contacted if a unit becomes available, so do still contact us if you would like to know more about this option.
JUNE 2024
At the end of this month we had a fabulous supporters open day to thank some of those who have kindly and generously supported us through the journey of the build and creating our community.
We had a fantastic day with many friends from far and wide come to celebrate with us over a communally cooked meal in our common house, delicious cakes and strawberries!