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

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."

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."

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.