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We all share a 15-acre Georgian mansion for the price of a two-bed house

Natalie GriceBBC Wales
BBC Dol-llys Hall taken from the far side of a long-grass lawn. The hall is painted light yellowy cream and has a slate tiled roof. To the left and right of a round tower-like protuberance are two covered verandas with supporting posts. Six large arched white-framed leaded windows are visible on both floors, with three chimney sets on the roof. The house is framed by large, mature woods. Some washing is visible on a line to the right of the picture.BBC
People have lived on the estate for centuries, but the present Dol-llys Hall was built in the early 1800s

Dreams of living in a Georgian manor house with 15 acres of grounds would usually be associated with a big lottery win.

But for the residents of Dol-llys Hall on the outskirts of Llanidloes, Powys, no windfall was necessary.

The Grade II listed building is home to a collection of ordinary people who have chosen to live cooperatively - sharing responsibility for maintaining the home and its grounds and trying to live as sustainably as possible.

"You have got a ready-made village mentality where people just help each other out," says Louise Robinson, one of the longest serving of 10 residents at the hall.

"There's six other flats going 'what can we do?' And that means a lot."

Louise Nicholson is a middle-aged white woman with shoulder length dark grey hair. She wears grey framed photo-reactive glasses, a light blue v-neck t-shirt with a lily pad white emblem on the front. She is smiling at the camera. Behind her is the main entrance to Dol-llys Hall. There are two dark wooden doors with arched fanlights above which open from the middle of a curved porch-type entrance. The building is painted yellowy-cream. There are arched windows to the left of the door visible. A mop handle and a piece of wooden furniture can be seen to the right of the doors.
Louise says everyone also appreciates having individual front doors to their flats

The hall, which has served as a school and a care home as well as a former stately home over the years, now holds seven flats within its walls and a number of communal living areas and shared facilities like washing machines and heating.

Louise first came across Dol-llys after she was made redundant from her insurance job in London. She found herself spending more and more time away from the city, enjoying walking in the rural countryside, and realised she wanted to live there permanently.

"I'm a single person, so moving to a country village on your own is not that easy," she says.

"Somebody mentioned [intentional] communities and said 'have you heard about them?'"

After investigating quite a few, she knew she did not want to live somewhere where she only had a bedroom and everything else was shared. And at Dol-llys, where she moved in early 2020, she found the perfect combination of community and privacy.

"We term ourselves as co-housing, because we all have our separate flats," she says, and that the set-up is not a commune.

"We share the grounds, we share the common rooms, we share responsibilities and decision-making, but we all have our front doors, which I think is important to everybody who chooses to live here."

Ken O'Brien and Susan Lancaster are a white man and woman in their 70s. Ken has white hair and a white beard and wears wire-framed rectangular glasses and a black t-shirt with different phases of the moon photographs across it. Susan has shoulder length white hair and a fringe and wears slightly tinted glasses. She wears a green polo shirt with a red three-quarter zip fleece top with a crest to the left side of the chest. She has her arms crossed and he has one arm over her shoulders. They are both smiling at the camera. Behind them are trees, the edges of an allotment growing area, a shed with multiple plastic composters and containers and tools outside, a wooden bench and a polytunnel in the background. The photo is framed by trees.
Ken O'Brien and Susan Lancaster looked at communal living when their children were young but had decided it was not the right time

When Ken O'Brien and Susan Lancaster, both 70, began looking for a new start in retirement, one of the things that attracted them to Dol-llys, alongside its architectural merits and the plentiful grounds, was its record of success.

The community began back in 1991. When Louise first moved in, one of the original members had been there for nearly 30 years.

Ken, who had lived in a religious community as a young person, says of their search for cooperative living: "There were new ones, one that had high turnovers, ones that had a specific ethos, which this one didn't.

"It seemed mature, professional. People were organised. It was stable and well-run."

"The house was in a very good state as well," Susan says. They moved in a few months after Louise.

Ken adds: "We have common interests so we can do things together. But it's also the communal project – we're looking after the house and the grounds. We've got projects like growing so we like to think we can be a bit more resilient."

The room has very high ceilings with plaster features on it and carved white pillars at either side of a sitting area and a high arched window painted white with fanlight effects at the top. On the back wall is a dark wooden frieze with a mantelpiece and fireplace, giving a mock-Tudor appearance. There are a number of sofas and armchairs and a tall wooden chest of drawers in the middle of the room with a round coffee table next to it, making a demarcation between the living area and a dining area. The edge of a dining table and chairs can be seen in the bottom left corner of the photo. there are bookcases either side of the room with multiple books, games and plants on them. High on the walls above the line of the dark panelled area and a white wooden horizontal panel are a number of framed paintings. There are two suspended lampshades and a standard lamp in the corner by the window.
The private living rooms in the hall are said to help provide the "perfect combination of community and privacy"

Jemma, 36, originally from Birmingham, and her partner Yiannis had "always lived alternatively".

They had first met while living in the Brithdir Mawr community in west Wales, then lived on a houseboat, and another community in Meifod, Powys, before applying for the one rental unit at Dol-llys.

"We were both always seeking an alternative but for us, especially in our early 20s, it was a really good way to get access to different role models, different ways of thinking. Things like permaculture, nature, those weren't necessarily things that we had time for or access to," Jemma explains.

"As well as all the benefits from working on projects and having your home life be quite vocational, it can be very practical as well. It can be a way to have a better quality of life."

Jemma works in healthcare and has a 40-minute commute to a larger town – not unusual in rural mid Wales – and her partner is a support worker.

Having a community-focused job is a common theme here, with several residents either current or former health, education and public sector workers.

Membership of Dol-llys, apart from those renting, is on a loan stock basis with the community being equal shareholders, and residents pay a monthly service charge for group expenses and projects.

They have a wood-fired boiler to provide heating, with solar panels providing some electricity and people are billed according to consumption.

A large sunny sitting room with two sofas and two armchairs,a footstool, a piano, a dark wooden sideboard, a number of coffee tables and a large printed orange, yellow, green and brown piece of fabric on the wall. there are a couple of plants on top of the piano and side tables. There is a large arched floor-length window at the back of the photo framed by long blue velvet curtains.
The communal living room is where everyone at the building can gather

Everything is decided by consensus – such as installing solar panels - which Louise says can take time to get used in the beginning.

When someone moves out, the co-operative looks at what they paid moving in then compares with national and local house price trends to decide on a fair percentage increase in value.

Their website says a share now costs £230,000, with the right to live in a two or three-bedroom flat. Two to three-bedroom properties in the local town currently advertised range in price from about £110,000 to upwards of £250,000.

Louise says: "We all grow veggies down there. We've got the chicken field. We've got eight acres of woodland. We've got the lake down there and we've got a huge field."

The minimum commitment is one work day a month, at least one half-day of gardening, which is specific gardening maintenance as opposed to working on their own individual plots of land, and a half-day of processing wood to provide fuel for the communal boiler.

They all learn the necessary skills when they move into the house if they do not already have them.

"I've got a chainsaw man turning up today to sell me a new one," says Louise. "I never thought I'd be doing that when I lived in London."

A mixture of worked allotment beds and bushes and shrubs, with a row of plastic-covered polytunnels in the background. The area is surrounded by mature trees.
Some residents and local people use the allotments and polytunnels on site to grow food
Jenny Kincova is a white woman in her 60s with feathered short light grey hair. She is wearing a sea-blue short-sleeved t-shirt. She is smiling slightly and looking just to the right of the camera. Behind her are pillars supporting an out of view covered veranda, and a wooden table and bench. She is seated. Beyond the veranda is a large grassy lawn which has been left to grow naturally in most areas and trees behind that. A hill is visible in the further distance.
Jenny Kincova is the longest resident but is moving out this summer

Residents range in age from seven to 70. This summer, however, the balance will shift towards a younger demographic, as two older residents are leaving and two families with three children aged from six to 12 will be moving in.

There is a four-stage application process to become a community member.

"We know that the more effort we put into the application process, the better chance it's going to work and it's going to be a good fit," says Louise.

Jenny Kincova, 64, the longest current resident of nine years' standing, is one of those moving on to live in Llanidloes itself, like a number of previous residents.

She says of her move to Dol-llys: "I was on my own. My girls had left home. I didn't just want to move to a place and not know anyone. Once I moved here, I was really excited by the prospect of communal decision-making and cooperative community living."

Although she still enjoys the communal living, she has started to find the "emotional energy" needed for decision-making and keeping a group together tiring.

"I don't want to lose contact with here at all," she said.

"As you can see, we still get on, it's not about that at all. It's just about change again.

"I'm not going to have all this space and I'm not going to live in a listed building."

The hall offers free allotments to locals in exchange for some help on their work days, holds open days, lets groups use its communal rooms for things like yoga classes, and will be holding its first board games weekend this summer.

Its residents even gave the hall to friends for free to use as their wedding venue.

It has recently hosted volunteer workers from the Wwoof (Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms) organisation, where people get free board and lodging for two weeks while helping out with projects in the grounds and learning skills.

The hall is an early 19th century building. It is two-story light cream colour, with 10 arched upper and lower windows visible along one wall which have curved white-painted leaded patterns across the glass. A covered porch with the entrance door is just visible behind a hedge in front of a curving driveway. There are two skylights in the roof. There are flowering shrubs planted in front of and to the left of the hall. Some bicycles are visible underneath the porch. It looks well cared for.
Locals can use Dol-llys Hall for things like yoga classes and games events

On a guided walk around the grounds with Ken and Susan, the scale of what the residents get becomes clear. If you are not daunted by the amount of work needed to maintain grounds of this size, it is a mini slice of paradise on a sunny day.

But although being guardians of nature and living lightly on the planet is clearly important to all, it is the human connection above everything that holds the group together.

Louise says: "I personally think it's the way to go with the way the world is going. Just affordability, resource-wise, just caring for each other."

Jemma adds: "More people are becoming aware of [co-housing] and educated about it now. And actually, living alone in a box is probably more new in society."