King Charles will finish building enormous new town in just FOUR years

• King Charles, 75, started building Poundbury in Dorchester in the late 1980s
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King Charles is predicted to finish building the final quadrant of his Poundbury model town in 2028 – with the area set to become one of the most sought after in the country.

Poundbury is on Duchy of Cornwall land near Dorset in Dorchester, and wasKing Charles’ vision of an utopian idyll, where private and affordable housing mix with boutique shops, places of work and services like schools and medical centres within walking distance.

The royal started working on the project in the late 1980s, and since then, it has grown to boast around 2,320 homes, 4,600 residents and 240 businesses employing 2,400 people.

Poundbury was named one of the best places to live in Britain by The Sunday Times last year.

And the project is not yet finished: according to the town’s website, West Dorset District Council granted outline planning permission for the rest of Poundbury in December 2011.

King Charles (pictured at Buckingham Palace last month) was mocked for Poundbury when he started the project some 30 years ago, but last year, it was named one of the best places to live in the UK by the Sunday Times

Poundbury has lots of green spaces, including the Great Field (pictured), which boasts some 30-acres as well as trees and shrubs

The final areas to develop cover the northern and western perimeters, with 350 homes in the Northern Quadrant due to be completed in 2026.

Meanwhile, the final section, which is the North West Quadrant, was granted planning consent in 2021. Building started in 2022, with the area due to be completed in 2028.

According to the website: ‘Poundbury will have then increased the population of Dorchester by about a quarter, with an eventual community of approximately 5,800 people.’

Poundbury was built based on four principles of urban planning and architecture, including ‘creating beauty and reflecting local character and identity’, as well as integrating affordable housing alongside private housing.

The area was designed to be a ‘walkable community’, which is welcoming to pedestrians as well as drivers and other road users.

Finally, Poundbury was built to offer a mix of uses, ‘integrating homes with retail and other employment uses and public areas’.

Poundbury takes its pristine image very seriously and there are strict rules for locals who want to decorate their homes.

Those who want to paint their house or door must only use colours from Duchy of Cornwall’s ‘approved colour’ list.

PICTURESQUE: Another aesthetically pleasing area in Poundland is Queen Mother Square (pictured)

Great Field park (pictured) in Poundbury is used by local children and residents, especially dog walkers

The town offers a range of architecture and building styles. Melrose Court (pictured) is a residential building that looks out on to The Great Field in Poundbury

If they want to grow a garden hedge it has to be an ‘appropriate indigenous species’ and must be ‘trimmed regularly’.

Any house signs must be printed in one of the six permitted fonts with the letters no more than 4cm high.

And residents are banned from using their properties as air bnbs.

When creating the town, the then 45-year-old Prince of Wales hated much of Britain’s modern architecture (an ‘unmitigated disaster’; a ‘monstrous carbuncle’, to use some of his phrases).

So he commissioned Luxembourg architect Léon Krier to build a town of his own, using 400 acres of land and money from his charity the Duchy of Cornwall.

Everything in Poundbury had to be walkable, look classical and be to Charles’s taste.

A sign in Queen Mother Square, Poundbury (pictured) gives a flavour of the classical aesthetic style of the town

BEST PLACE TO LIVE: While Poundbury was viciously mocked in the past, and even referred to as a ‘feudal Disneyland’, it is now considered one of the UK’s best places to live

Even the people who bought houses there still had to follow the Duchy’s strict rules for decoration – Poundbury will always, and must always, look a certain way.

The reaction was uniformly negative. The Guardian declared Poundbury ‘fake, heartless, authoritarian and grimly cute’.

Other descriptions criticised the area for being a ‘feudal Disneyland’ and a ‘toy town’.

And that wasn’t the only criticism.

Architectural writer Jonathan Meades was even more scathing: Poundbury was a ‘cottagey slum’, he said, a ‘Thomas Hardy theme park for slow learners’.

However, some three decades later, Poundbury is being seen in a different light –  partly because the King’s longstanding eco-friendly streak has stopped being the butt of the joke.

Once seemingly woo-woo, Poundbury’s use of renewable gas and its discouraging of cars are now seen as sustainable and forward-thinking.

Last year, the town was named one of the best places to live in Britain by the Sunday Times.

This comes at a price: according to Rightmove, local property prices have averaged £414,423 over the last year.

Aerial shots of the town show its picturesque buildings and pedestrian-friendly lay out – residents are encouraged to eschew cars and to walk as much as possible

According to the Sunday Times, everything locals need is within a 10-minute walk from their homes

According to the property website: ‘The majority of sales in Poundbury during the last year were flats, selling for an average price of £302,250. Terraced properties sold for an average of £426,500, with detached properties fetching £617,076.

‘Overall, sold prices in Poundbury over the last year were five per cent up on the previous year and similar to the 2021 peak of £410,979.’

According to the Sunday Times, Poundbury features a mix of architectural styles, including  Georgian; Victorian; Arts and Crafts; colonial; Dutch and Venetian.

Among the housing types are coach houses; terraces; industrial warehouses; mews houses; townhouses; villas, mansions; mansion blocks and faux converted barns.

However, despite its aesthetic being mocked by some, among the praise for Poundbury, is its integration of social housing (‘there are no “poor doors”.’).

In addition, everything residents need is within a 10-minute walk.

Alongside homes, the town boasts infrastructure including a GP, dentist, school, and Post Office.

Local businesses include a garden centre, multiple coffee shops, a florist, butcher, and two pubs.

Poundbury boasts some large green spaces, including the 30-acre Great Field, which has been planted with 400 trees and 26,000 shrubs.

The Great Field in Poundbury (pictured) boasts 30-acres of green space, as well as this children’s play area

Local property prices have averaged £414,423 over the last year in Poundbury (pictured) according to Rightmove

Among some of the forward-thinking sustainability projects in the area are built-in bird boxes, with plans to provide one box per house on the remaining phases of development. These boxes attract swifts, and are audited by the RSPB.

Local campaigns include a plastic reduction scheme implemented by the Brace of Butchers shop, which opened an extension called Naked Brace in 2018, a plastic-free shop which supplies ‘fresh market vegetables, grocery staples, local honey and milk supplied by local farmers’ to customers using their own containers.

The local school boasts an ‘Eco Crew’ which has been working on a Refill scheme, which encourages people fill up water bottles in a number of businesses around the town, instead of buying new plastic bottles.

This Eco Crew has also helmed a movement calling on councillors, businesses and the wider community to make Dorchester a plastic-free community.

Poundbury also features a community orchard, which is maintained by volunteers, who maintain the 60 apple and pear trees, wildlife pond, and its bees, hens, geese and ducks.

This in addition to the innovative materials used in the construction of local amenities, and the sustainable tech solutions offered to residents.

These include ‘a solar slate product with aesthetic appeal; a wall battery through to an external solar office design, which also powers the home…[a] public car charging point’.

The majority of Poundbury’s homes are heated using renewable gas from the UK’s first biomethane-to-grid plant, Rainbarrow Farm.

Another member of the Royal Family, the late Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, has been immortalised in the town, being memorialised by this bronze bust

King Charles and Queen Camilla (pictured) pose next to a bronze bust of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh during a visit to Poundbury in 2023

All these features led to Poundbury being praised by house expert Phil Spencer, speaking during the History of Britain in 100 Homes for Channel 4 in 2019.

He said: ‘It’s phenomenally successful, popular and has risen in value.

‘Having seen for myself its beautiful homes and huge sense of community, it’s clear to me this experiment is a real success.

‘What I love about Poundbury is the fact it’s thrown out the rulebook. It certainly takes inspiration from the past but I think it could be a blueprint for the future.’

Meanwhile, Charlotte Fancy, a local who owns Boo’s Toy Shop and champions the town’s small businesses told the Sunday Times: ‘Poundbury isn’t perfect, but the one thing you will have if you move here is friends and a community that will be behind you.’

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