Wireless ideas...
Serial-to-Bluetooth modules exist, but they're about $50 the each for
the bare module, which may be too pricey for a large configuration.
Duplex-ness shouldn't be too much of an issue, given a sufficiently
generous buffer.
Diamond MMC had an interesting card back in the 90's that provided
home networking by imposing an RF carrier on the telephone copper
pair. I've still got a couple of these cards and they work pretty
well. The box claims 10Mb/sec, but reality is more like 1Mb. Still
faster than a modem, however.
IR was pretty popular for a short time--you could even go around
corners if you aimed the transceivers right. It sounds as if Tony
just wants to go point-to-point, so there would be only a single
transmitter on at any one time.
Others have mentioned carrier-current setups, but unless they're
pretty sophisticated, low-bandwidth and error-prone. I've got a copy
of an article from an issue of the HP Journal back from the 80's,
where a spread-spectrum carrier current system is described in
detail.
I wonder if one could simply buy a carton or two of old 900MHz
cordless phones and jerry-rig something up? Come to think of it,
I've never even tried interfacing a regular modem to a cordless phone
handset. I wonder if it works...
Cheers,
Chuck