AS WE approach our 60s, my wife and I are starting to explore the possibility of joining with friends to buy a collection of farm buildings or something similar, so that we could live alongside one another in neighbouring but separate homes.

We are not thinking of this merely as a way of avoiding the loneliness that many older people experience, but as a stimulating and cost effective way of living somewhere interesting – and sharing our lives more closely with friends than would otherwise be the case.

We know of Stroud’s co-housing and co-flats developments, having lived at Springhill Cohousing for several years when it was first established. But, Stroud being Stroud, our guess is that there are probably already groups of friends who have got together and decided to live as close neighbours with one another on a shared site but on a smaller scale than co-housing tends to be. If we’re right, we’d love to hear from any groups who are doing this – especially groups of people predominantly aged 50 plus.

I’m sure we could learn a lot from other people’s experience as we begin to consider this option ourselves.

We can be contacted at pandj douch@gmail.com

Philip and Jane Douch

Ebley