"Friends who have lived in communes tell me the worst thing is the endless meetings. All those issues a household bickers into resolution – who will sort the recycling, who finished the milk – are decided by committee. Yet from Findhorn ecovillage in Moray to the co-housing community at Postlip Hall, in Gloucestershire, Britain has more than 400 “intentional communities” or communes, and in the post-Covid era they’re fielding more inquiries than ever.

"Some people turn to co-housing to be able to afford a roof over their head. But many, according to the website of umbrella organisation Diggers & Dreamers, are looking for a more values-led, potentially unorthodox way of life. There are echoes of the 1960s and 70s experiments in communal self-sufficiency, when food was farmed organically, kids were home-schooled and some communities went entirely off-grid. But the roots of the movement go much further back than that." - Fiona Sampson