Cambridge K1 Cohousing at Marmalade Lane

04/10/2026

We hosted US cohousing pioneer Charles Durrett (www.cohousingco.com/charles-durrett) & UK Cohousing Network CEO Owen Jarvis on Friday evening along with guests from Still Green Cohousing, Suvana Cohousing (www.suvana.org/northstowe) and The Hive Cohousing (www.town.co.uk/northstowe/). We shared a meal together then sat outside around the fire. It was a lovely evening and we hope that those new to cohousing learnt as much as they could from those of us who've been in it for a few years.

13/09/2026

We are hosting an Open Day on Saturday 17th October

Participate in our cohousing community for a day and explore the benefits and challenges of sharing life with your neighbours.

03/09/2026

We try to make the communal gardens of Marmalade Lane as wildlife friendly as possible. We are visited by a lot moths - our resident lepidopterist trapped their 400th species last night and at the beginning of August, a swarm of bees visited us for one night. A swarm remover from Cambridge Beekeepers Association collected them the next day.

20/08/2026

We had a wonderful art day preparing plaques for our boundary fence along the guided busway

13/07/2026

We are inviting those of you who live very close to Marmalade Lane (i.e. in the surrounding streets) to help us create some art to brighten up our boundary fence along the bus way. Painting, printmaking and drawing will feature.

10/07/2026

Sharing is a big part of cohousing whether it be the practical things such as tools & toys, or the theoretical things such as ideas & visions. Some things, however, we don't intentionally choose to share - they just get shared as part of cohousing. Socks are a good example - the machines eat them, then regurgitate them into the next household's wash. Children and pets are another example - they appear in your house, even though they're not yours. Clothes pegs, plant pots, dinner plates & tea towels are also some of the items unintentionally distributed throughout our households.

25/06/2026

Though our community has its own lane, we also live on the two 'regular' streets on the edges of our site. There are problems with the trees on one of these streets and we are concerned. https://www.change.org/p/don-t-cut-orchard-park-trees-plant-new-ones

21/06/2026

When we first moved into Marmalade Lane we were disappointed that 'The Lane' was tarmac. We wanted a garden, not a road! However, tarmac does have it's advantages : many of the resident kids have learnt their bicycling, skateboarding & rollerblading skills on it in a safe environment, chalk drawings have flourished, tennis & badminton have been played and this year, cricket has appeared.

06/06/2026

This week's pictures:
1. Parents are constantly on the hunt for their children's shoes - there are multiple hiding places in our shared garden.
2. One of our communal washing machines broke which is a big deal with most of the community not having washing machines in their own homes. Thankfully, we have people living here who are confident enough to poke around and fix the problem.
3. A few of the kids harvested broad beans from our communal allotment. They were happy enough eating them from the pod but, cooked and put on a plate, were less keen!

24/05/2026

We held our first 'Beating the Bounds' at Marmalade Lane last week. We walked the perimeter of our site beating the ground with willow branches. We sung our own version of 'An Acre of Land', learnt about Roman roads, king's hunting grounds and the amazing diversity of trees that we have either planted or that have self seeded on our perimeter. Sorry no photo, but you can imagine that we did look a bit odd beating the ground with willow!