The Poundbury Fiasco Escalates
Karen Martin
Camrotter's maintenance:
Trouble in Charles's Toytown
The prince's model village, already riven by taunts of 'them and us',
is now further split by the felling of trees. Mark Townsend reports on a
royal vision that has lost its green halo
Sunday April 4, 2004
The Observer
It was a vision of a classless society that would bring to life the
Prince of Wales's architectural blueprint for Britain. Yet Poundbury, the
village created as an exercise in social engineering, is in revolt. Amid
deepening resentment towards its creator, Prince Charles's model town is
accused of spoiling the beauty of Dorset it was conceived to complement.
Tensions have reached a new level with an avenue of tall ash trees
lining the old Roman road that snakes westwards through Poundbury from
Dorchester being razed to the ground. For decades, locals had been proud of
their famous avenue. Instead there is now an ensemble of mud-spattered
building huts and mounds of gravel as Poundbury encroaches on to more prime
pasture. Prince Charles's office is blaming the contractors for being
over-zealous, but there is no promise that any more trees will be replanted.
The row has exposed the mounting antipathy towards the development,
which has grown from being a village into a mini-town; it is only one-sixth
of the 400-acre site it will eventually cover. Environmentalists argue that
it is an act which has undermined the prince's green credentials. They claim
there is hypocrisy in his repeated demands to protect Britain's countryside
while building on land which brings yet more traffic and housing to a once
tranquil area.
For many in Dorset, the quaint cottages and mock-Georgian façades, so
sought-after by wealthier couples, are little more than an upper-class
ghetto, inappropriate to the area and ridiculed by people on nearby council
estates. There are also questions over whether it has lived up to the
prince's original ambitions to have a socially integrated community.
Working-class families and single mothers are offered low-cost rented homes
in Poundbury, cheek by jowl with those able to afford £450,000 for a second
home. Some admit that the mix makes them uncomfortable.
But most of the local population can only dream of moving into the
strangely quiet streets. One of its principal developers - CG Fry & Son -
admits as much. Homes start at £215,000, 'a lot of money down here',
according to a company salesman. In fact, it is almost nine times the
average regional salary.
The divide between the haves and have-nots is more than fiscal. Even
the wrought-iron bollards that dissect side-streets connecting Dorchester's
council estates to the Duchy town are laden with symbolism. Sally Faulkener,
a mother who has lived on the estate beside Poundbury for 15 years, said:
'It has become a case of them and us.'
The definition of 'them ' has come to signify a homogeneous population
of the white, rich and retired. Those working in Poundbury do not recall a
single black or Asian resident. 'There is one English chap of Japanese
descent. Does that count?' asked one.
The young generation, particularly children, are conspicuously absent.
Staff at The Poet Laureate pub, named after the prince's late friend Ted
Hughes, talk of a small group of 30 young adults who have moved into the
cosy flats above Poundbury's Budgens village store. In an apparent move to
balance the bias, Britain's youngest landlord, Will Hadlow, has taken over
the pub which had been empty for two years. 'It's getting younger all the
time, but there's still a lot of old people around.'
At Poundbury, one in five homes has been offered to those on local
authority housing lists, yet even those helped by the hand of royalty can
remain non-plussed. Mary (not her real name) moved into Poundbury from the
adjoining council estate two months ago; now she wants to move back. The
myriad building styles in a tight space have left her cold, her 20ft garden
is too small and there is no privacy.
'I think it's horrible, an eyesore, it's all so higgledy-piggledy. The
house itself is lovely inside, but I wish I could move back to the estate.'
She stopped to put down the shopping she was lugging up the hill towards the
Duchy territory - there is a distinct lack of public transport to serve the
community.
Supporters point out that Poundbury has a lower crime rate than other
parts of the county; even the gravel laid down on the roads is an anti-theft
device because of the noise it makes underfoot. But crime does exist amid
its high-density maze of beige stone and slate-roofed homes because the
inhabitants clearly have more income than those in nearby streets. Even
Simon Conibear, Charles's ambassador in the village and Poundbury's
development manager, had his bike stolen. 'But it was unlocked and crime is
half what would normally be expected in an area like this,' he said.
What cannot be doubted is that Poundbury has become a cash cow, not
only for developers but Charles himself. According to Hadlow, the Duchy
takes 10 per cent of profits from the pub where the prince pops in twice a
year to sup IPA ale. A more usual arrangement, say brewing industry sources,
involves landlords paying rent and receiving drink from a brewer while
keeping all profit from food and other services. Similarly, the land on
which the prince's Poundbury stands has efficiently churned out huge
profits. Initially each of Poundbury's 400 acres was sold at £40,000.
Experts now say they are sold for at least 12 times that. Such astonishing
growth has helped Prince Charles - himself worth more than £380m - to post
record profits for his 700-year-old Duchy estate.
He has now won key planning approval for a second town, built partly
on Duchy land. 'Surfbury', as it has been dubbed, will be on the southeast
fringes of Newquay in Cornwall, within two miles of Fistral Bay, the centre
of British surfing. Some local people have already questioned the scale of
the development and whether it is necessary in a county which already
struggles to cope with its traffic, particularly in summer.
There are many fans, some influential, who love Poundbury. Musician
Jools Holland and Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, who has sanctioned a
massive home-building programme across southern England, are among those
impressed by its architecture and vision. Evidence of a community is already
evident among the town hall's noticeboards and their adverts detailing
football teams, petanque practice and theatre groups. So far 700 people have
settled there - the target is 5,000 by the time it is completed in 2025.
Surveys indicate the majority are happy and feel secure, whatever other
locals feel.
Whether the ash trees that lined the Bridport Road will be replaced
remains unclear. According to the Duchy, an over-eager contractor made a
mistake in tearing them out. The Duchy is quick to counter that the trees
chopped down were not the same as the magnificent nineteenth-century
specimens destroyed by disease in the 1970s. But the replacements were
popular and added to the landscape.
Poundbury was little more than a nondescript housing estate clinging
to the northern edge of Dorchester before Charles took the name in 1984; now
the people there want it back. 'We've asked him, but what can you do when
royalty wants something?' said John Neale, who has lived on the original
Poundbury estate for 44 years.
Reclaiming Poundbury as their own has become a totem for many in the
area as disquiet towards the landed gentry mounts. 'The problem is that what
the Duchy wants, the Duchy gets,' said John Carter, whose vista of the
rolling fields towards Maiden Castle was obliterated by the arrival of the
Duchy dream. Neale's neighbours claim their estate of rolling lawns, neat
housing and children playing in the streets offers a superior version of
community than that created by Charles and his Austrian architect, Leon
Krier. 'I wouldn't live there. Those houses are all on top of one another,'
said a pensioner, tending daffodils in the spring sunshine.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/monarchy/story/0,2763,1185504,00.html