26 Women Turn London Convent Into All-Female Co-Housing

Imagine sharing wine in a communal kitchen with your best friends, living independently but never alone, and aging exactly how you want to age.

That dream became reality for 26 women who created New Ground, Britain's first all-female co-housing community in a former convent school in North London. Ten years later, 21 of the original residents still call it home.

The journey started in 1998 when Maria Brenton, teaching women's studies at Cardiff University, visited North America and Europe to study how different countries cared for aging citizens. She discovered co-housing and brought the idea back to a group of women from feminist and housing networks.

They fell in love with the concept immediately. But turning dreams into blueprints took persistence.

Twelve years of searching led them to St. Martha's, an old convent school in High Barnet. They transformed it into 25 apartments, each with its own kitchen and bathroom, connected by hallways to a shared common house with a kitchen, recreation room, and garden.

The group insisted on including eight apartments for social housing tenants. "The women who started this didn't want it to be seen as a place of privilege," explains 74-year-old resident Jude Tisdall.

London charities Housing For Women and Hanover Housing Association joined the project, helping secure funding and logistics. The community now includes nine nationalities, workers and retirees, singles and one lesbian couple.

Men can visit anytime. They just can't move in. "We have brothers, fathers, sons, grandsons, lovers and everything in between," Tisdall says. "It's about taking control of our individual lives. It's not a rejection of men."

The Ripple Effect

New Ground residents share all responsibilities from finance to gardening. They're trained in conflict resolution, make decisions by consensus, and require an 80% majority vote when they disagree.

It's not always smooth sailing. "We're not Stepford Wives, we have to work at it and negotiate," Tisdall admits.

But the model works. They age with dignity instead of sitting in day rooms singing old songs, avoiding what founder Brenton calls "the ageism and paternalism, the infantilization of older people by social care services."

Now 80, Brenton and other original members documented their journey in "Our Later Years." Resident Shirley puts it simply: "We are unique, but we don't want to be unique."

They want to inspire aging women everywhere to imagine what's possible.