Sadly, on November 30 2022, Shirley Meredeen, the founder of New Ground, died. Shirley was 92. She is the first member of the New Ground community to have died since the group moved in almost six years ago. Shirley’s death was not unexpected, but nonetheless a huge loss to the community. Shirley was the powerhouse behind the scheme’s long gestation since the group’s first meeting at her home in an era when such initiatives were rare in the UK and any public support for community led housing only a dream for the future.
When Shirley and a small group of friends in their late 60s decided “to stop just talking about what we want in our old age and make it happen” they were building upon some years of organising and campaigning in the Older Feminists’ Network they had set up to empower older women via the social changes of feminism. Shirley was also a founder of the ‘Growing Old Disgracefully’ Network which now exists internationally to challenge stereotypes of older women and foster links between them. The community development skills the group honed through these forms of organising and socialising were put to good use in setting up what became ‘OWCH’ or the Older Women’s Cohousing Company – later, New Ground. In 2000, Shirley was one of a small group to travel to The Netherlands to visit various long established older people’s ‘living groups’ to learn from their experience. In later years, she did the same in relation to cohousing in Sweden.
Rich resources of emotional intelligence were drawn on throughout those preparatory years to establish a pattern of monthly gatherings dedicated to shaping and enabling the social cohesion they knew would be a prerequisite for living together. Shirley’s skills in particular fed into the group’s ethos of autonomy, mutual respect and mutual support. She had a horror of capitulating to a British tendency to patronise and infantilise the old, especially older women, which in her view amounts to misogyny and ageism. Her rallying cry ‘We shall not be done unto’ became a guiding motto for the OWCH group.
Shirley’s special contribution was the doggedness and determination that fuelled the resilience to withstand constant disappointments, reverses and loss of hopeful sites – experiences that most cohousing groups today are familiar with. She also gave time and energy to promoting the concept of senior cohousing to policy makers and local authorities and more recently took a key part in numerous training and information sessions for groups visiting New Ground.
The second oldest member of the group that eventually took up residence in New Ground, Shirley enjoyed six years of her dream, thankfully. The New Ground community celebrated her 90th birthday amid all the challenges of the Covid lockdown and produced a book of photographs and tributes to thank her for the drive that brought them there. My introduction to that book amounted to what I realised was ‘an obituary ahead of its time’ – but how lucky for anyone, I reflected, that they should get an advance copy of such a thing. One particular attribute of Shirley’s I paid respectful tribute to was the capacity of this strong and forceful woman to bow to the common will of the group she had helped build.
The community supported Shirley’s two sons around the few weeks of her dying and will join with them in early 2023 in celebrating the life of a feisty and indomitable woman. Shirley’s legacy to the members of New Ground remains a robust communitarian ethos which she fervently hoped they would continue to honour and observe.
Maria Brenton
Uk Cohousing’s Senior Cohousing Ambassador