• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Poundbury

liveinabin

liveinabin

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Oct 19, 2001
Messages
1,921
Last weekend I visited my folks. While we were there we went to Poundbury.

Poundbury is essentially a housing estate, but rather than being rows of Barrett homes all the houses are different. They follow a number of design styles right though the ages. What they have tried to do is to create a village. There is a mismatch of design styles, Small pedestrian side street. A market square with shops and a pub.

I had not been there before, neither had the Hubby. I found the whole place very strange, and I can't say why.

Here is the website:
https://poundbury.co.uk/

Have you been there? Do you live there? Why did if feel so strange?
 
I think the whole thing is weird. To my mind there's something fundamentally ridiculous about trying to live in the past. What's the point of trying to rebuild an english village? Why build a bunch of houses in a mid-georgian style, and a couple of early-victorian cottages, one or two mid-victorian houses... is this or is this not the 21st century? ridiculous. Prince Charles has a lot to answer for. Obviously I can see the attraction of an actual english village.

If anyone's interested i'm pretty sure there's a talk about the impact of prince charles' 'carbuncles' speech as part of Architecture Week (from June 18th) - if i find any info i'll post it, i'd like to go myself.

EDIT sorry i should add i've never been and so really i'm in no position to make sweeping statements about the place.
 
we have some horrible disneyland type estates up here, all over the green belt, which do have a curious mixture of victorian and georgian styles but that's about it.
 
In my parents village they recently erected various brand new thatched cottages with flint walls. Can't really object too much as it's the traditional building method of the area.
However, mock vernacular, Georgian, or Victorian Barret style estates make me want to stab the architect with a spoon. It's not even as if they copy the styles well, or with imagination.
I've read that Poundbury is a bit of a failed experiment, as the close-knit agrarian society that is required to make a village work is long gone. You can't build one from scratch, villages takes hundreds, even thousands, of years to develop. That's probably why it dosn't 'feel' right.
 
It's the same problem that besets the 'New Towns' built post WW2, you cannot build a load of houses and then just dump people there. Communities have to evolve and the new towns that I have had the misfortune of visiting have a very real unpleasant atomsphere about them which is persisiting into the 3rd and 4th generations of occupants.
 
It looks more like a film set than a real village. The total absence of people in the photo's doesn't help - it reminds me of the the John Steed/Emma Peel era iof 'The Avengers'.

It's like an English version of that idealised American town in 'The Truman Show', which I believe is a real planned community (though obviously it's not really in a giant dome)
 
Timble said:
It looks more like a film set than a real village. The total absence of people in the photo's doesn't help - it reminds me of the the John Steed/Emma Peel era iof 'The Avengers'.

...
Click to expand...
Precisely what I was thinking, Mr Timble! :)
 
you cannot build a load of houses and then just dump people there. Communities have to evolve
Click to expand...

absolutely I agree that you can't just dump a bunch of people in a bunch of new houses and call it a community.

and the new towns that I have had the misfortune of visiting have a very real unpleasant atomsphere about them which is persisiting into the 3rd and 4th generations of occupants.
Click to expand...

but i think that's a bit harsh! I don't know what towns you've visited, but take Milton Keynes - it might not be my favourite place on earth but it's not deeply unpleasant, and it certainly has a sense of community.

Or Hemel Hempstead - I'm not saying i'm going to move there tomorrow but it's not exactly a 'very real unpleasant atmosphere' (apologies to any HH & MK residents);)
 
Similar vein but not the same exactly, one of my old school friends lived in a quiet street in the suburbia of Liverpool. The houses in the street had obviously in the past been custom designed by their builders each one is different from the last.

The road always seems immencely tranquil and quiet with minimal traffic along its slightly curving way. I dont know why but I always got the creeps walking down the road. It had that same style of unrealness that Kubrick seems to create in A Clockwork Orange.

Weird...
 
Some new old fashioned cottages were built in the village next to my folks and they work really well.

I've had a look at some Poundbury houses up for sale on http://www.rightmove.co.uk and the interiors don't match the outsides.

My dad used to live in the original village of Poundbury when he was a boy. This is very odd for him.
 
Timble said:
It looks more like a film set than a real village. The total absence of people in the photo's doesn't help - it reminds me of the the John Steed/Emma Peel era iof 'The Avengers'.
Click to expand...

the real village used in the Avengers is Aldbury just behind Tring.. it really has a village pond etc and looks just like a typical English village.. the only one ive seen!..its also in the Dirty Dozen and hundreds of other films...(the avengers episode is the one where everyone in vallage is involved in a murder inc type system)
 
liveinabin said:
Some new old fashioned cottages were built in the village next to my folks and they work really well.

I've had a look at some Poundbury houses up for sale on http://www.rightmove.co.uk and the interiors don't match the outsides.

My dad used to live in the original village of Poundbury when he was a boy. This is very odd for him.
Click to expand...

Still the same identical stamped out new interiors that you see evreywhere else in new houses.

I like the idea but in reality it's just another modern housing estate.
 
the real village used in the Avengers is Aldbury just behind Tring.. it really has a village pond etc and looks just like a typical English village.. the only one ive seen!..its also in the Dirty Dozen and hundreds of other films...(the avengers episode is the one where everyone in vallage is involved in a murder inc type system)
Click to expand...

NO WAY! I'm from really really near there and i never knew!
My dad almost died in a car crash there. But he didn't so it's ok :)

I like the idea but in reality it's just another modern housing estate.
Click to expand...
I like the idea of really well-considered urban (rural) planning. Just can't understand why they want to live in an imagined or half-remembered past.
 
lemonpie said:
NO WAY! I'm from really really near there and i never knew!
My dad almost died in a car crash there. But he didn't so it's ok :)
Click to expand...

yep..glad he didnt die!..tho people in the avengers episode wernt so lucky..i remeber it beingin the New Avengers too...it stand in for standard English Village in a lot of telly progs.

http://theavengers.tv/forever/locations.htm

list two...Murdersville and Dead mans Treasure.

http://theavengers.tv/forever/locations-5.htm

are u in Berco or Tring?..great museaum there
 
also found....

Jassy (1947)
Dirty Dozen, The (1967)
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004)
'Written in Blood' (Midsommer murders)
Denham Village (Twilight); (Inspecor Morse)
Stocks Hotel and Country Club, on Definitely Maybe Oasis cover.




and Ashbridge: When the TARDIS landed in 'Spearhead from Space', the traumatised 3rd Doctor was taken to Ashbridge Cottage Hospital.
 
As an architectural historian I would say it looks quite well done. There are none of the obvious mistakes you see in Barrat type estates. It isn't as much fun as Port Merion (The Prisoner) though! Parhaps some of the oddness is the result of Leon Krier's involvement in the project - he was an apologist for Albert Speer.

I think it needs a spiritual centre - a church, mosque, synagogue, palace of Communism - something to suggest a spiritual direction for the people. I always find the blandness of shopping centres, where nothing contentious is allowed to interrupt the shopping, rather disturbing. This could be the problem with Poundbury.
 
Berco or Tring?..great museaum there
Click to expand...

Berko - in my childhood anyway. But used to go to Tring musuem loads - they had these tiny fleas in clothes.

I can't believe I didn't know about this!

architectural historian
Click to expand...
Cool! I just bought myself a book about british architectural styles, there's loads of stuff i've always wondered so i decided to find out.

*wanders off to find pictures of aldbury in films*
 
I think the idea of building in a traditional style is a good one, but that is no reason to eschew modern techniques or build "fake" historical buildings. One of the pictures on that poundbury page showed a house that appeared to have a maltings-style conical towers type of roof. That is fine, if the house was once a maltings, but why build one on a house that is not.

I think that in quite a few places (certainly in parts of Oxfordshire) planning offices insist that buildings should be constructed from traditional local materials. That seems like a good way to keep the feeling of an area.

Then again, in at least one part of southern scotland the planning offices dictate that all new houses must be pebbledashed and that seems like a bizarre idea so I'm probably really conceited and shouldn't be allowed to think about buildings.
 
i definitely think local materials should be used where possible - i saw some cool new flint buildings in west sussex - gives you a real sense of place, instead of identikit barratt homes and identikit high streets.
 
the graveyard does look strange. esp the small ave of "pylons"
leading to the roofed structure

a sacrifice anyone?
 
lemonpie said:
Berko - in my childhood anyway. But used to go to Tring musuem loads - they had these tiny fleas in clothes.

*wanders off to find pictures of aldbury in films*
Click to expand...

did you happen to know Dan tompson?..lanky geeza lived upone of them horrific hills off the main street and the down by the canal with his mum?... just thinking its a small world.
 
I'm in two minds here (well, no difference there some might say).

The idea of trying to recreate a village mentality I think is commendable. Perhaps doomed but commendable. We in the modern day are more isolated when it comes to our private lives. The media sets up "horror stories" which discourages most of us from chatting to our neighbours, let alone socialising with them. Our children are forced (by the phantom of parental choice) to travel miles from home. We must work antisocial hours, have no time or energy to cook proper meals let alone build up community projects.

I, for one, would give anything for an opportunity to at least start a reverse of this trend. Then again, I came from a big London family whose parents were very community minded. I'm sociable, responsible and tolerant. The trouble is, I get the feeling that the "big wide world" out there is going to treat me like a naive sucker.

As far as the achitecture is concerned ...

My parents retired to a little private estate on the boundary of a north Kent holiday resort. It had been an amateur racing-car circuit in the thirties (like Brooklands) and the building plots were - as legend has it - first settled by mechanics and drivers of the time. All the roads are named after cars such as Daytona, Alvis, Renault, Ford etc. The majority of the homes on the estate are bungalows (again, according to legend, because mechanics would use the optimum of land area).
This estate has a sedate but unusual architecture now. Some look like huge beach-huts but most are now re-builds or completely new constructions on the original plan.
This estate did have a village "feel" about it, with gossip and social interaction, but a small post-office - in the middle of the estate - was closed. Such a little thing ... but it all became disheartened at this. Now, it's a shadow of what it once was.

To sum up, this "village" was quite recent but had a central genius locii to unite local feeling. Take that away and homes become merely houses where people live.
 
This is an interesting phenomenon.

I live in west Dublin where the estate was done differently.

We moved here from about 3km down the road to be within walking distance of a certain nondenominational school. The new estate was an old stud farm, so rolling hills, and open spaces. The estate was designed around a village centre, with an old manor house as the anchor. Apartments and townhouses were built close in around commercial units, and radiating out from that were the two, three and four bed houses, with a small, but noticeable mix of designs.
Our old estate had been 400 odd houses of two designs, three bed or four. It was our first house in terms of being home owners, and was done so to start a family. When my wife was pregnant and on maternity leave, she found that we had moved into a dormitory estate.
By 09:05 each morning, the place was abandoned, as almost everyone was at that 9-5, kids in care/school part of their lives. With the nearest shop ten minutes walk away, she said it was eerie and oppressive.
The new place encourages people at different stages of life, with the various forms of accommodation and has resulted in far greater vibrancy and mixed communities. There are people going about their business at different times of the day and so the place never feels deserted.
Of course there are many other factors too, but I think that mix of accommodation is the cohesive hook that allowed other elements to come together to compound the effect.

That said, Poundbury sounds interesting.
 
Naughty Felid. I have been to Portmerion a couple of times and loved it, It is slightly "off "in a really delightful and intriguing way. I have not seen the prisoner although I am aware of it ( difficult not to be) , but you can enjoy the village without being a fan as it is really a museum of saved architecture and worth a visit in its own right. Now restrictions are lifted in Wales I am trying to book a break there for my own enjoyment (although I will claim it is a surprise for the significant other.)
 
smnmy said:
I've been to Poundbury, it's a creepy place and everything is named after royals. Interesting to visit though. Been to Portmeirion too - more fun.
Click to expand...

So the locals happy living there? Is it a reconstruction of a bygone age?
 
It's a normal-ish town on some level, has some chain shops, the buildings are not made to look aged and it's not like the Disney town Celebration for example, but the layout and architecture is an interpretation of of 'traditional' english, as approved/conceived by prince charles, who owns it all. It's meant to look like it's grown naturally with a range of styles from our glorious past but nothing looks later than the 1920s or something. Was built from scratch, mostly in the '90s I think. Some buildings have had fake alterations like bricked up windows, but they were built that way. Charles has been a vocal critic of modern architecture for a long time, and this is what peak england looks like in his head, which is a bit off to say the least, given the weird life of corrupt mega privilege he's led. The thing that creeps me out most is all the royal-named stuff.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top