A Right Royal Residence

To think that one flue - one innocent looking gas flue - could cause so much trouble. But flues aren't allowed in Poundbury. After all, this is the Prince of Wales' ‘model' village, built according to his architectural vision, and they contravene the blueprint. So, when a flue accidentally appeared on one of the new-build houses, well.. a sculpture was quietly commissioned. The flue is now hidden beneath a limestone dragon, and every morning - when the boiler fires up - steam whisps through its nostrils. If only town planning could always be this polite.

Things are different in a ‘model' community. And, even though it's ten years since earth was first broken at Poundbury, one must maintain standards. "Look at that", says Simon Conibear, the development manager, nodding at two concrete lions sitting atop two gateposts. "How far do you go in policing good taste? Should they be facing in or out? If I had got three letters of complaint, I would have done something about them. But I only got one. My job would certainly have been easier if the lions had been hand-made..."

And what a job. Conibear is currently contemplating a Swiss woman who has rigged up a satellite in her garden because she can't get Swiss tv any other way. The dish contravenes some sub-section of some sub-clause in the Poundbury Design Guidance (no lettering on a house's name panel shall be higher than four centimetres; no caravans shall be parked in a drive; no front door colour shall be chosen without consulting the palate provided), but thus far he's overlooked it. He smiles a PR smile. "And as long I don't get any letters, that's fine by me".

The Prince of Wales has always had clear ideas about the way he wants Britain to look. As far back as 1984, he was comparing the extension of the National Gallery in London to "a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much loved and elegant friend." He was no more polite about the Paternoster development in St. Paul's. So, when he received a request from the council in Dorchester to build homes on his land, he agreed. It was a chance to put the architectural ideas he outlined in "A Vision of Britain" into practice.

Poundbury isn't an exercise in princely largesse. As with the Crown Estate, the Duchy is required to make money on its holdings and pass it along to the government. Because Charles wants to be seen as the kind of chap who pays his way, he needs Poundbury to be a financial success. At first, because of its association with the Prince, critics dismissed the place as elitist. Some still do. But the 650 residents that have moved there since 1993 seem delighted with the decision. And properties are now selling for a premium.

With his tattershall-check shirt and stout walking shoes - and a black labrador called Toby - Conibear has the look of a gentleman farmer. And the ruddy good health that comes from taking 100 tours round Poundbury every year. At £7.50 a time. Half the councils in Britain have sent delegations to visit Poundbury, and when John Prescott described the place as "a cutting edge of development for the new millenium", the whole world wanted to come. Including a delegation from the People's Republic of China.

Poundbury is quiet. Tourists still stop, and ask if it's open. But then Dorset is naturally quiet - it has the highest percentage of retired people in Britain. And retired people make less noise. As it is, the village is only one-third complete. By 2020, there will be 250 acres of built development, 150 acres of green space and 5,000 residents. A vets, a dental studios, an alternative health-care clinic, an organic market, a nursery and a pub will be joined by a sports centre and - quite possibly - a cinema.

A cinema would be nice for the children living in the village. As it is, they are banned from ball games in public courtyards. And discouraged from skateboarding by the gravel. It's not something that Conibear is especially proud of. He gestures towards Victoria Park, one of the estates that borders on Poundbury. "That is a perfectly nice housing estate - but you wouldn't let your kids play outside. It was designed to suit the council surveyor in the 1950s, when all he cared about was the free movement of traffic. Poundbury is different."

In Poundbury, Conibear says they are "reclaiming the streets". But he does it, peacably, with chippings, cobbles and traffic humps. He wants to demonstrate the way they calm traffic, naturally, and he goes to stand in the middle of the road. He encourages me to do the same. "This is a very, very sharp bend", he says. "The driver has no visibility round the corner. See? There are no markings on the road. And no traffic signs. The driver reads his environment. And so he slows down." At least Conibear hopes he slows down.

Conibear has worked for the Duchy of Cornwall all his professional life. It's a full-time job. In Poundbury, it's not just the streets that he's reclaiming. It's the verges. He has noticed two sets of tyre tracks across the wet grass, and is striding toward the van driver responsible. He shouts up to the man (drains department) in the cabin. "Don't drive on the grass, please - it is winter" he says. Polite but firm. Van drivers aren't used to being spoken to in that way. But before the driver has a chance to think of something less polite to say back, Conibear has turned and gone.

Broadly speaking, Poundbury is about difficult concepts like ‘community' and ‘society'. Conibear points to the Royal Crescent in Bath, where one lady objected to being ordered to paint her door white or black. So she painted it yellow. And took the matter to court. She won, and had it written into her deeds that the door must always remain yellow. "We wouldn't have let that happen" says Conibear. "In Bath, there was only the planning regime to stop residents. And that was undermined by the planning inspectors. In Poundbury, we have tighter systems of control."

Poundbury isn't the world's only ‘managed' community. There's Seaside, where The Truman Show was filmed. This pastiche of old America, with the slogan "new town, old ways", comes with its own rule book. So does Celebration, the Walt Disney town in Florida, where all visible window coverings must be either white or off-white; a resident may hold only one garage sale in any 12-month period; and a single political sign (measuring 18 by 24 inches) may be posted for 45 days prior to an election. It makes Poundbury look relaxed.

There is something familiar about the architecture of Poundbury. It has the feeling of town squares, alms houses, and inns of court that you've seen somewhere before. Possibly the Cotswolds, or the more gracious quarters of London. But everything feels well-built, which is down to the Duchy's system of quality control. Even if a house has been finished, the Duchy won't sign the land over to the housebuilder unless they're happy with the job. Housebuilders aren't keen to be out of pocket - the prestige of Poundbury is such that they're prepared to put up with it.

Living on land owned by the Duchy of Cornwall - the 660-year-old estate which is vested in the Prince as heir to the throne - does brings with it a certain cachet. And some have suggested that the residents of Poundbury are becoming a little affected. For instance, they want to call their new shop the ‘Poundbury Village Stores'. But Poundbury isn't actually a village. It's an urban extension of Dorchester, which is why you won't see the name on the road map. Even though ‘Poundbury Village' sounds better.

Some say that Poundbury shouldn't actually be called Poundbury at all. Because Poundbury already existed - 400 yards down the road. It wasn't the bucolic place you might imagine, populated by shepherds and cow-hands, but an estate of postwar council houses. And, like the other estates of Dorchester, was in stark contrast to the ‘model' village being built on its doorstep. To them, the Prince's village just interrupted their uninterrupted view of green fields. Relations between the communities are still, at best, cordial.

For somewhere designed to be socially inclusive, building a seven-foot perimeter wall wasn't such a clever idea. It could be mistaken for snobbery. "My daughter was having a cup of coffee in the Octagon café" says Molly Rennie, Liberal councillor for one of the estates bordering on Poundbury. "She overheard one resident saying ‘Oh yes, we're getting quite a few people from Esher moving in now'. Well, I thought to myself, if you want to be with people from Esher, stay in Esher. Don't move down to Dorchester. Sorry - don't move to ‘Poundbury Village'."

The roads linking Poundbury to the neighbouring estates are blocked by bollards. The bollards are only be there to stop the roads becoming a rat run, but they have been taken to represent something else - segregation. Which is why they are now bog-standard county surveyor bollards, and not the crested Duchy bollards which are dotted round the rest of Poundbury. "Community is inclusive" says Conibear. "But it's also exclusive. And Poundbury has tended to be perceived to be exclusive of Dorchester. That is something we are now really keen to break down."

The landlord of the Poet Laureate pub in Poundbury has no Worcester Sauce. And Conibear has just ordered a tomato juice. "Consider this your first complaint" he says. The pub only opened - formally - two days ago, but if Conibear gets three letters about the Worcester sauce, well....He has high hopes that the pub will help the integration process, and has suggested a pub mailshot of the surrounding estates. "You can't tell people to mix" says Conibear. "They'll give you a very robust answer. But you can give them every excuse to do it."

Landlord Simon Heffer is used to running high-fashion bars and restaurants in Poole and Bournemouth. Poundbury will be a change. "Stainless steel skirting and neon lighting won't work with the folks here" he says. "We've had old doddery ones. We've had ones with plums in their mouthes. And we've had ones that are more Dorset than the sheep in the field. All different sorts. This is the right place to bring them all together. The church and the pub are always the centre of the community. But Poundbury doesn't have a church, so the pub is even more important."

Peter and Diane Bryant like the high-backed sofas at the Laureate. And the view across to Brownsword Hall, built with money from greetings-card magnate Andrew Brownsword. "I call it the Village Hall" says Diane. "I know I shouldn't, but I can't help it." The Bryants are big on integration. Which is why Peter knocked on doors over Christmas, and invited estate residents to come carol singing. Nothing. "I still think they resent us. It's not that we've got nicer houses than they have - I think they resent us for putting up houses in the first place. But you don't buy a view, do you?"

The Bryants still like to tell their grandchildren about the day the Prince of Wales came round for his tea. "One of his aides nipped in first" says Peter. "He said ‘Have you got any honey? The Prince likes honey in his tea'. The Prince had wellies on when he arrived, so somebody handed him some shoes to wear indoors. I never forgot I was talking to the Prince - after all, I finished every sentence with ‘Sir'. But he asked about the heating bills and the plumbing. He really wanted to know that Poundbury met all our expectations."

The Prince hasn't been popular with architects for years - not since his outburts over the National Gallery extension and the Paternoster development. They say that he has no letters after his name (well, not the right sort of letters) and that his ideas about architecture are out-of-date. But when West Dorset District Council earmarked 450 acres of Duchy land for development in 1987, the Prince jumped at the chance to put his ideas into practice. He would build something that was unashamedly traditional, reflecting the Dorset vernacular and relying on Dorset materials.

The Prince of Wales employed architect Leon Krier to produce the Poundbury masterplan. Krier is from Luxembourg, and a champion of traditional town planning. He arranged the houses in lanes, squares and courtyards. Not in cul-de-sacs - cul-de-sacs are anti-social, with their backs turned on the community around them. Poundbury is inclusive, which is why social housing sits next to private housing. And makes up 20% of the housing stock. "Councils don't build houses any more" says councillor Rennie. We can help with grants, but that's it. We wouldn't have been able to build so much social housing in Dorchester without Poundbury."

You can't tell the social housing from the private housing. Except, maybe, from the car outside. Actually, the car round the back. Because parking in Poundbury is all ‘round the back', in courtyards planted with almond and hornbeam. They are focal areas - open and overlooked. And they are one reason why crime in Poundbury is so low. Conibear reckons another reason is the gravel. It's difficult to imagine a hardened criminal being deterred by gravel but the facts speak for themselves - the only reported crimes have been minor garage thefts, and the crime rate is one-third of Dorchester's other urban extensions.

Modernists haven't seen fit to change their minds about Poundbury now that it's more than a blueprint. Piers Gough, a loud-mouthed architect who likes visual irony, says the place would have been an interesting experiment in 1802 - but not in 2002. He has a very different vision for Britain, and dismisses the project - nicknamed Charlesville - as a twee pastiche of a non-existent village past. "[The Prince] doesn't seem to be interested in culture," says Gough. "He doesn't seem to be interested in the world going forward. He wants it to go backward."

Which is what offends antique dealer John Walker. He drives past Poundbury every morning, but stares straight ahead. It offends his eye. "In my shop in Dorchester", he says, "I have to distinguish between people with taste, who want the genuine article, and people without taste, who can't tell the difference. I won't see any of the people of Poundbury in my shop. They want imitation art and imitation antiques in an imitation village ruled over by an imitation royal family. It's not my scene. Not my scence at all."

The tourist authority reckon that Poundbury is bringing 300,000 visitors into Dorchester every year. But Walker doesn't care. He won't see them in his shop either. In fact, Walker has a theory - the first Poundbury conspiracy theory. "I noticed the other day that the dry-stone wall that used to run along the coast road between Abbotsbury and Bridport has gone. Somebody told me - and I'm not saying who - that it's been taken to be used in Poundbury. So the real Dorset is being demolished, just so they can build something ersatz."

Poundbury is being built in five phases, each with its own ‘statement building' to act as a focal point. The first of these, the Fleur de Lys, created a rumpus. It is a huge, twin-towered building, out of scale with the rest of Poundbury. Even Conibear agrees. "It does overloom" he says. It overlooms Castle View - a sheltered housing project that created a rumpus for a different reason. People don't like the fact that the old people are living in the middle of a busy road. Bryant doesn't understand the fuss. "The residents don't need to leave very often, if you get my drift" he says.

Poundbury is more than a pet project for the Prince. He visits regularly, and sends a representative to walk round once a month. He passes comment on the front elevation of every building in the village, and scribbles detailed notes to the housebuilder straight onto the plans. The Duchy has crown immunity for planning - and could develop without planning permission if they wanted to - but they refuse to exercise it. Instead the Prince chooses, in the current climate, to submit himself to the full planning process. He's no fool. Which is why he's never been known to appeal.

When the Prince was considering different designs of belvedere for the land behind Poundbury, Peter Bryant was invited to visit Highgrove. "The Prince set out all the options, and said ‘Which one do you reckon, Peter?' I said ‘That one, Sir'. He said ‘So do I. Come on'. And that was the belvedere that got built." Some, like Roy Martindale, the deputy chairman of the Conservative Party in Dorchester, object to this cavalier approach. Martindale complains that the Prince of Wales always gets what the Prince of Wales wants - and that ends up costing money.

"Take the cemetery" says Martindale. "The Duchy provided the land. Which was great for Dorchester. But the structure was designed by the Duchy as well [along the lines of the architectural principles of Poundbury], which meant that it ended up being a lot more expensive. The surprise was that the "folly", as I like to call it, was paid for by the town council. The belvedere was the same. And so was the cricket pavilion. It was designed in line with what the Duchy wanted. But it certainly ended up costing us more as a result."

Whatever people might say, Poundbury isn't really about the buildings - it's about the space that those buildings take up. According to the Department of the Environment, Britain needs to build 4.4 million new homes by 2016, a 20 percent increase in the existing stock. And if the 1980s pattern of suburban development continues, that will consume 650 square miles of farm land. So we have no choice. We need to consider how we build, and what we build, if we're serious about protecting the British countryside.

There are no semi-detached houses in Poundbury. And no front gardens. They are deemed a waste of space. Critics say that, as a result, the village feels oppressive. Poundbury does have a high-density - there are 15-16 people per acre - and the green spaces are on the outskirts of the development rather than in the middle. But that keeps Poundbury tight-knit. Which means that people leave their cars at home. "Everything will be walkable" says Conibear. "You wouldn't have that in the suburbs, because the local pub and the local shop would already have closed down."

Gough might not believe it, but there is a great deal of innovation in Poundbury. There are solar walls on new-builds, and every house has been awarded 99 out of 100 on Britain's Standard Assessment Procedure - a mark of real energy-efficiency. And Poundbury is truly radical in the way it's addressing the issue of key workers. "Maybe the Duchy will make its own rules for shared equity" says Conibear. "Maybe the Duchy will keep 50% of houses and flats, and sell the other 50%. We are certainly looking at all the options."

Conibear is proud of Poundbury. But lives in Cerne Abbas. "I'm not ready for urban village living just yet". Well, he's got young children who need a big garden. When they're older, and they want to walk to the cinema or the sports centre, he'll consider it. But, for now, he's a bit miffed at having his bike pinched. It was during the Prince of Wales' last official visit. The villain wasn't deterred by the gravel. Ironic really, that it happened on a day when the place was swarming with Special Branch. It wouldn't have happened in Cerne Abbas.