Kew Bridge Eco-Village update (+ Seedy Sunday)

There’ll be a seed swap day on 14th Feb, inspired by Brighton’s orig­i­nal Seedy Sun­day — details here.

On June 6th 2009, near­ly a hun­dred activists con­verged on a piece of derelict land at Kew Bridge in south west Lon­don to cre­ate an eco-vil­lage com­mu­ni­ty based entire­ly on sus­tain­able tech­nol­o­gy and con­struc­tion tech­niques.

This eco-vil­lage occu­pa­tion is inspired by cam­paigns like The Land is Ours which cam­paigns peace­ful­ly for access to the land, its resources, and the deci­sion-mak­ing process­es affect­ing them, for every­one, irre­spec­tive of race, gen­der or age. for more infor­ma­tion, please vis­it:

Please post any seeds or post­cards or any­thing you like to:

The Eco Vil­lage
2 Kew Bridge Rd
Brent­ford
TW8 0JF
site phone num­ber — 07967864370

In Decem­ber we had a six month cel­e­bra­tion and invit­ed peo­ple from the com­mu­ni­ty to a fire par­ty. It was a great suc­cess.

In Sep­tem­ber last year, vil­lagers cheered when Houn­slow coun­cil­lors put off a plan by St George to build 164 flats, a river­side pub, a busi­ness hub and a piaz­za on the site.

The devel­op­ment is not due to be dis­cussed by a coun­cil com­mit­tee before March and, with local elec­tions tak­ing place in May, a meet­ing may not take place until June – mean­ing the eco-vil­lage may remain for anoth­er six months.

Over the last 4 months we have grad­u­al­ly improved our liv­ing con­di­tions on the site. We have a full work­ing com­post toi­let, a kitchen and a round­house. Still 100% rely­ing on dona­tions and the rub­bish you throw away, we have built up our com­mu­ni­ty from noth­ing!

The best improve­ment so far is def­i­nite­ly our homes. You may have gone past us on the bus and seen a tarp vil­lage, assum­ing that it was all tents — but its not! We have learnt to build our own hous­es out of hazel wood poles. By bend­ing them into arch­es, tying them down and then insu­lat­ing with blan­kets and tarps, we have cre­at­ed won­der­ful lit­tle liv­ing spaces that are easy peasy to do!

We still main­tain that we are essen­tial­ly a com­mu­ni­ty gar­den. We encour­age every­one from the local area to pay us a vis­it and share their ideas about what we should do with the land, as well as get­ting them to help us plant our veg­eta­bles and also just to chill out and get to know us all.

We will hold a pub­lic meet­ing every Thurs­day night at 7pm on site, and we shall try to make every Sun­day an event filled open day.

Need­less to say, we still wel­come every­body from all over Lon­don and the world. We have had quite a few inter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors late­ly! Every­one is wel­come to come and stay as long as they fol­low site rules which include no drugs and alco­hol, as well as being con­sid­er­ate to oth­ers and you must active­ly par­tic­i­pate as a mem­ber of the com­mu­ni­ty.

We espe­cial­ly wel­come any­one with any skills or knowl­edge which may be use­ful or inter­est­ing. We encour­age peo­ple to hold work­shops to share their skills, whether it is about com­mon law, herbal reme­dies, yoga, or even how to make didgeri­doos or repair bicy­cles! Or even if you know noth­ing but just want to learn, come along too!

Our week:

Mon­days — Closed (we go and protest out­side MOD and down­ing street)

Tues­days — Fri­days — Open 11–1 and 5–7pm

Every Thurs­day — 7pm Pub­lic meet­ing

Every Fri­day — Wild Food Fri­day 10am — a walk around Rich­mond park tast­ing and learn­ing berries nuts and mush­rooms

Sat­ur­days and Sun­days — Open 11–6

(By ‘Open’ I mean the gate is open and we give tours. If you want to come and help us then please just come in any­way!)

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You are wel­come to come and vis­it us and stay over if you like, but:

1. You must sleep in the Hexiyurt guest­house as we don’t have the room for any more tents. The guest­house can acco­mo­date about 6 peo­ple, so it may be best to ring us pri­or to your vis­it to check if there is enough room for you!

2. The Hexiyurt has to be cleared of your stuff by 10am so it is open for vis­i­tors and as a work­shop space. (you can store your things in the man­sion shed instead dur­ing the day)

3. You are wel­come to stay up to 7 days, after which time you must leave as to give oth­ers the chance to stay over.

4. If, after stay­ing for 7 days, you wish to move in per­ma­nent­ly, we will have a meet­ing to dis­cuss it, to deter­mine if we have enough room, and then shall hope­ful­ly wel­come you in!

Capac­i­ty is a big issue on site at the moment and we are unlike­ly to allow many more peo­ple to move in on a per­ma­nent basis. How­ev­er as win­ter freezes over we might lose a few mem­bers and have room for some more. If you are des­per­ate to stay with us then show­ing us that your are a good, hard work­er who gets along with most peo­ple on camp and who is polite and cour­te­ous to all will defi­ant­ly help you 🙂

Soon after it start­ed