The town the King built: a solution to housing or a middle-class ghetto?

Poundbury in Dorset was Charles III’s passion project: his vision of a more sustainable Britain married with a traditionalist aesthetic. Now, there are at least two dozen similar communities planned. But is this the best way forward for the nation? Arabel

The nation’s new monarch has long been a prominent standard-bearer for sustainable building and classically inspired architecture. As his reign begins, many of the ideas that the King put forward as Prince of Wales are becoming reality, and at least two dozen new communities are planned or under construction that replicate many of the philosophies first expressed in his “new town” – now decades old and near completion – of Poundbury.

These new developments, often on land belonging to ancient families or long-established private estates, feature locally sourced building materials, elegant architecture, generously proportioned buildings and a pedestrian- and community-friendly attitude. For these reasons they are also expensive to build and more expensive for initial purchasers than massmarket developments.

So are these new communities the best and most sustainable way forward for a nation that – everyone agrees – desperately needs more new housing? Or are they, as some have suggested, exercises in architectural kitsch and middle-class ghettoes in the making?

Few argue with the fact that there is a need for new housing in the country, but the output of the big volume housebuilders is often met with widespread derision. The Government set a target of building 300,000 new homes in England every year by the mid 2020s and while this has yet to be reached, there has been a noticeable rise of ill-designed, identikit houses standing on tiny plots mushrooming from the edges of towns and villages and blighting the countryside. Not only that, but few add much in the way of amenities to the communities that live in them; indeed, most are a drain on existing resources such as schools and GP surgeries.

“Red tape and regulation means it’s so expensive to gain

planning permission that only large PLC developers can afford to take the risk,” says architect Hugh Petter of ADAM Architecture. “Their aim is a quick return on capital which produces frankly lamentable results, with those affected by the development receiving no tangible benefit.”

Alongside these developments, however, is a new wave of new towns springing across the country, many of them on landed estates, in a movement that could be dubbed “Poundbury 2.0”. It was nearly 30 years ago, in October 1993, that mechanical diggers began to realise the vision that had been brewing in the imagination of the then Prince Charles for several years: to create an experimental planned town. Building work at Poundbury, which stands on a 400-acre site to the west of Dorchester in Dorset, is due to finish within two years, at which stage it will be home to a population of just under 6,000.

From the outset, the future King insisted that the design of the town would be based on traditional architecture. As distinct from a standard housing estate, and in addition to the mix of private and social housing, the development has included shops and businesses, community spaces, pubs and a school. It has famously accumulated detractors who accuse it of being “an over-sanitised middle-class ghetto” or a “retrokitsch fantasia”. However, judging by the number of new towns along similar lines that are being built – there are currently around 25 projects in various stages of development – these naysayers might be wide of the mark.

In many ways, today’s land-owning families building new towns are emulating a formula that was established by their ancestors who developed and leased large tracts of towns and cities from the Industrial Revolution onwards. One of the projects currently on the planning table is Upper Swallick, a garden village of 2,500 houses to the south of Basingstoke built on land in the North Hampshire Downs owned by the Portsmouth Estate. The project is spearheaded by 40-year-old Viscount Lymington whose father was instrumental in the Basingstoke Corporation, which developed the town in the 1960s.

That post-war expansion that took place across the country was designed to tackle two issues: the need to provide the working classes with better quality housing and the – now widely debunked – belief that the only way to deal with Victorian-era slums was to raze them. The housing drive led to around five million council properties being built by 1981. As the 1970s progressed, however, the dream of the post-war new town was beginning to tarnish, with rates of depression rising among the housewives who lived in them and social problems percolating.

“The young post-war architects were highly influenced by pre-war Stockholm housing for the masses,” explains the architectural designer Ben Pentreath, who is behind a number of these new town projects of the 2020s. “Underlying all without exception was a contemporary modernist aesthetic: it goes without saying that they haven’t really stood the test of time but, as we know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

Whatever their legacy, new towns were often well located, well organised and boasted good infrastructure. Today’s masterplanners of new towns believe they are taking the best of these models but updating them for modern life. “That means focusing on walkability and not assuming that houses should be separate from industry,” says Pentreath, echoing the approach of the New Urbanists, who advocate a return to traditional planning. “If they are redolent of anything, they it’s the Edwardian garden suburb movement.”

Hugh Petter, who is also involved in several new town projects, goes further: “Investing in ‘placemaking’ [shaping a development in accordance with the needs of the people who are going to live in it] is a dark art to the big developers. But research by the Prince’s Foundation has found that good placemaking results in better social and economic outcomes and a more diverse community.” It’s a message that is gathering momentum, says Petter, who is not only working with landed estates but with pension funds and at least one local authority on new town plans that put placemaking and community building at the centre.

A NEW TOWN FOR THE PEAK DISTRICT Landowner and developer Charles Rifkind isn’t one to mince his words when it comes to the quality of houses produced by volume housebuilders. “You only have to drive down the M3 or past Wanidents

in Oxfordshire to see the results: companies reward their executives and shareholders handsomely, yet build ugly boxes of detached houses [for which developers can charge a premium] using low-grade materials, with no thought to design or landscaping. You should build once and forever – but these projects have no longevity.”

The fault, in Rifkind’s mind, lies firmly with local authorities, which need to intervene on aspects including the quality of materials used to build new projects, for example knitting them into the landscape by using locally sourced stone.

Rifkind’s project, building a new 500-home community in a quarry on a hill overlooking the spa town of Matlock in Derbyshire’s Derwent Valley, is taking a different approach. He’s using local stone and slate, to reflect the setting, and building houses designed by David Morley Architects. The scheme has been nearly 20 years in the making but has been welcomed by the Duke of Devonshire, whose Chatsworth estate lies eight miles away.

It’s unlikely that the Matlock community will be finished for another 10 or 15 years, but the first res

started to move in earlier this year; by the time of the late Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, the community was sufficiently established to hold a street party. Walkability features here: cars have consciously been located behind the houses so that walking is encouraged. It seems to work, too. Paul Watson, 76, a retired former international development consultant, and his wife Ruth, 72, moved into a two-bedroom apartment in October last year. “It was the apartment rather than the location that initially appealed, but we love the concept of Matlock Spa being based on activity, health and wellbeing,” Paul says. “We like walking and our new home is within easy distance of the Limestone Way which runs from Matlock to Castleton.”

The layout stands in direct contrast to the cul de sacs of the 1960s and 1970s which were designed so that cars had a turning circle. Matlock is influenced instead by designs laid out by the early Georgian aristocratic developers. “Original estates in central London created communal gardens and crescents which allow residents to congregate – that’s what we’re trying to bring here,” says Rifkind.

BUILDING A NEW SCOTTISH COMMUNITY Once complete – in five or six decades – Tornagrain near Inverness will resemble a traditional Scottish market town, with 5,000 homes, three primary schools, a secondary school, shops, employment spaces, parks and other services set across 620 acres.

The team behind the project, which is led by John Stuart, the 21st Earl of Moray, began by studying different examples of towns new and old to help inform the evolution of Tornagrain. “The most successful examples had many characteristics in common,” explains Andrew Howard, head of the development. “They were compactly built, had a wide variety of housing sizes and types and a diverse community, and had employment and services and streets that were designed for peoples, not cars.” The plan at Tornagrain is to allow all properties to have off-street parking tucked behind the houses and flats; charging points for electric vehicles are being rolled out.

Today, Tornagrain has 250 houses and is a constant building site. In the space of a few years, it has a general store, pharmacy, a nursery school and a café. To retain the character of the town, each resident must commit to respecting the design code: a common practice for new towns across landed estates, including Poundbury (where a tenant recently got into hot water for having too many plants stored in a communal courtyard without approval). This is managed by a not-for-profit body called the Tornagrain Conservation Trust of which John Frid is a member. Currently it’s run by Moray Estates, the Highland Council and residents, but after 50 per cent of the town is complete the residents will assume majority control, as was the case in Hampstead Garden Suburb in north London many decades ago. Residents also pay a monthly maintenance charge which covers the cost of keeping the post-and-rail fencing in the centre of the town painted a clean bright white and managing spaces such as the communal herb garden.

The development has been widely embraced by the community. Much of that, believe the team, is down to ensuring their involvement was locked in early on. A series of interactive workshops were held in September 2006 between the public, designers and consultants, all led by the town planner Andrés Duany of Duany, Plater-Zyberk.

Architecturally, it emulates the vernacular style of the area. Pentreath has borrowed architectural details from towns within a 20-mile radius of Tortage

‘The public realm is important – that’s what creates a sense of place and builds value’