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LONDON: One family has succeeded in creating its own interpretation of a multigenerational housing community.

It is a sunny early spring weekend, and in the cosy kitchen of Mike and Margherita Nightingale’s home three generations of their extended family have gathered for lunch.

Plates are passed around, glasses filled, jokes cracked and stories told; it is a scene that is surely being replicated around the country.

When everybody is finished and ready to go, the couple bid farewell to Margherita’s son, Matt Rhodes, 46, and his wife, Abby, 40, whose three children, Eddie and Anoushka, 11, and Immy, 8, are already romping outside in the garden.

They also exchange goodbyes with Mike’s son, Will, 34, and Will’s partner, Kristie Waller, 41, before all guests set out on the journey home.

No more than 20 seconds later they are all at their respective front doors.

This blended family is living an experiment in multigenerational living — tackling the housing crisis afflicting young buyers and solving the downsizing dilemma, all in one.

Over the past five years Mike and Margherita have utilised the one-acre garden of their home in the village of Eynsham, Oxfordshire, to build two cost-effective and sustainable timber-clad houses for their two sons, three of their grandchildren, plus dog Joni, cat Maxwell and several chickens. In the future there is space for their two grown-up daughters to live here too, should they decide they want to join the rest of the clan.

“There are thousands of properties like this around the country with a reasonable garden,” Mike says. “If you have an extended family it is a way to explore a bit of group living and also move some equity over to your children without having to sell your home.”

Mike, 75, an architect who now runs a charity promoting sustainable development in South Africa, and Margherita, 74, a former nurse, got together in 2005 and married in 2007. Both had two children, a son and a daughter apiece, when they met. The family home is a Victorian edge-of-village property with an adjacent coach house, which Mike bought back in 1990.

“I was always aware that there was the potential to develop here,” he says. “Then, when Margherita and I got together, it just seemed a lovely way to make the family work.”

After kicking the idea around with the rest of the clan, in 2014 Mike decided the time had come for action. He hired the architect Stephen Chance, a partner at Chance de Silva with whom he had worked in the past, to draw up plans to build two houses in the backyard.

By that point Will, an audio engineer, and Kristie, a youth worker, were already living in Eynsham, in a two-bedroom cottage. Matt, Abby and their children were also living near by, in a three-bedroom shared-ownership property.

Getting permission for their compound living plan was no easy feat, even though the house is not listed, and required a couple of years of negotiation. Originally they wanted to build one long slim house along the boundary wall and a tall, slim three or four-storey tower-style home amid the trees.

“Of course the planners were very conservative and the tall building became shorter and shorter, and the long building became more of an L-shape,” Mike says.

Despite this, by 2017 they were ready to start work on Matt and Abby’s larch-clad four-bedroom house, with its sharply pitched roof and double-height living room, which the couple moved into in 2019.

Conveniently Matt is a builder — which meant they didn’t have to mess around with tendering for the work or worry about how to find a trusted contractor; he and a small team constructed both houses from start to finish.

“Everybody wants to be able to build their own house and have a say in how it is going to work for their family,” Matt says. “And we are quite a close family, so it is nice that my kids are growing up with their aunt, uncle and grandparents. They come up and do art with mum and play croquet with Mike — they have got the whole site to play on.”

In late 2019 work began on Will and Kristie’s airy three-bedroom house, also clad in larch, which sits by the front gates. The ground slopes steeply in their section of the garden, so the house is part sunken into the ground, meaning that a second-floor bedroom has double doors that lead out onto the roof of the living room below. They have sown wildflower seeds and in summer this green cover will be a mass of blooms.

The couple moved in in April 2021, which, Will said, was “a bit strange”. “We had just moved in with loads of other people, but because of the pandemic we couldn’t see anyone,” he says.

On a practical level this project has worked because Mike and Margherita had a ready-made building plot to offer their sons. They also footed the upfront £95,000 cost of preparing for the project, including groundworks, tree surgery, installing a sewage system and digging a well.

Obtaining planning permission and professional fees amounted to another £75,000. Building Matt and Abby’s house cost £425,000, while Will and Kristie’s came in at £445,000 because of the extensive groundworks required.

As each house was completed, each couple was able to sell their previous home and use the proceeds to buy their newly built property. Both houses have been constructed to be highly sustainable, with triple glazing, solar panels and air pumps, so running costs are very low. Each couple now owns their own home on a freehold basis, which means that should any of them wish to move on it would be possible.

The other big question is how living cheek by jowl is working out. “You mean, do we still love each other?” Margherita asks. “Yes, I think we do. We don’t argue. It is fantastic knowing they are here when we go away, and we can help them out too.”

Matt thinks it works because each family has plenty of privacy. “It is not like Neighbours, with us all walking into each other’s houses all the time,” he says.

Kristie agrees. “We have more privacy now than we used to living in a terrace.”

On the other hand they do see more of each other than before. “We probably meet up to go for a drink as often as we did before,” Will says. “But we bump into each other and chat all the time. It is those incidental meetings that are different.”

Collective living has its practical benefits. Excess eggs from Will and Kristie’s hens are shared, and the well, dug to lower the groundwater around their house, feeds an irrigation system for the whole garden. Mike’s big old Volvo car is used by Matt for family outings. Everyone is willing to chip in with a bit of childcare from time to time and look after each other’s homes when someone is away. Anybody is welcome to swipe a sprig or two from Margherita’s herb garden.