Divorce and high property prices are just two reasons why more people are choosing to cohabit with other generations of their families.

Agents report that there is growing demand for houses that are big enough to house elderly parents or adult children but flexible enough to offer everyone a degree of privacy.

One such property is Woodland House and Cottage at Salford, near Chipping Norton.

Set in nine acres, the package is on the market for a guide price of £1.395m with SFS/Hamptons and includes a house with five bedrooms, each with an ensuite plus a separate one-bedroom cottage in the grounds.

The main house has plenty of living space on the ground floor including a drawing room, library, kitchen/breakfast room, gym/sun room, games room and an office and there is also a double garage.

A more modestly priced property with a separate living area is The Cottage in Marsh Gibbon.

A 17th-century thatched house with exposed beams and an inglenook fireplace, it includes two bedrooms, each with its own separate staircase. In the garden of The Cottage, which is on the market for £385,000 with Fine & Country, is a one-bedroom annexe that houses a sitting room, kitchen and shower room.

Kemp and Kemp has a two-bedroom 19th-century cottage, in Somerton, near Bicester, for £440,000, which features a wood-burning stove in the sitting room, high ceilings and wooden floors.

Its other attraction is a former pigsty in the garden.

The stone building, which has been converted into a one-bedroom annexe with a cloakroom and utility room/study, could make the perfect den for a teenager or elderly parent.