Above, explore the eco features of the neo-Georgian house
The house is white-rendered, pleasingly symmetrical and light-looking, with plenty of windows, a neat front path and a blue door. Inside are tongue-and-groove floors, stained-glass windows and Fired Earth tiles. The walls, floors and roof are heavily insulated to retain heat, hot water comes from a superefficient condensing gas boiler and the house is heated by one wood-burning stove.
At the moment, it’s only a model — albeit a life-sized one — but it comes with a royal stamp of approval. Unveiled by Prince Charles at the Ideal Home Show last week, this is the latest property to be designed by the Prince’s Foundation for Building Community, the architecture, design and educational charity he founded in 1987.
And the four-bedroom Arts and Crafts-style house, together with a slightly smaller neo-Georgian model unveiled last year, could be coming to a site near you. The foundation plans to allow private developers to build the designs under licence for the first time.
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The properties are set to make their debut at Heyford Park, a former American air base outside Oxford, which is being developed by the Dorchester Group.
Hank Dittmar, chief executive of the Prince’s Foundation, says he hopes other developers will follow Dorchester’s example: “It’s not an exclusive licence.
“If it’s successful, it will lead to other people copying it. We hope that Barratt, which has changed a lot, would be interested in taking some of these ideas on board.”
Prince Charles is already an enthusiastic housebuilder. His first foray into the market was in 1994, with Poundbury, a model town in Dorset.
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Since then, he has created homes for more than 1,000 residents on Duchy of Cornwall land — in 2009, he built more properties than Persimmon, one of the country’s largest housebuilders. The emphasis has always been on green living and sustainability.
With 315 houses dating back to the 1920s already in situ, Heyford Park will eventually become a development of more than 1,000 homes, spread over 1,200 acres. Under the proposal — which has received outline planning permission — the Georgian model will line the village green, while the Arts and Crafts houses will be dotted around in several areas, although the precise number depends on demand.
Paul Silver, executive director of the Dorchester Group, which is working on Heyford Park with Frogmore Property, says it is too early to predict how much the houses will sell for, although they will be among the more expensive ones in the development.
“It’s fair to say that they are designed for people who will want the added extras,” he says. “They generally have higher floor-to-ceiling height than traditional houses, and are much more environmentally friendly.”
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Other features of the new show home, which buyers at Heyford Park will be able to specify, include decorative ironwork, timber flooring and traditional joinery, decorative stencilling, handmade English tiles and a slate kitchen worktop. The houses will largely be built from materials that have been sourced locally, by craftsmen working on or near the site.
Silver says he will incorporate some of the prince’s green ideas into other, lower-priced houses on the development. “We want to work closely with the Prince’s Foundation so that we can employ some of his technology into the more volume end of the scale,” he says.
Could this spell the beginning of swathes of royal homes built on developments throughout the country? Dittmar says this is possible. “Last year, 250,000 people walked through the [neo-Georgian] house at the Ideal Home Show, and they kept asking where they could buy it. We realised that the next stage was developing templates for designs, so builders and developers can use them.”
Dittmar believes that mixing traditional design with green features is a winning combination. “The bulk of the green houses that are being produced are done in a high-tech steel and glass motif,” he says. “Yet overwhelmingly, British buyers seem to prefer traditional homes.
“A part of sustainability is building things that last, and traditional styles clearly have done — so we’ve married those traditions with contemporary technology.”
British Homes Awards
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The Sunday Times, in conjunction with the British Homes Awards and the New Homes Marketing Board, is launching a competition to find Britain’s smart home of the future. Architects are invited to submit proposals by June 8, and the winning design will be built at next year’s Ideal Home Show.
Separately, awards will be given to properties built since June 1, 2010 in 11 categories, including best small house, family home and conversion, restoration or refurbishment. Anyone can nominate their favourite, again by June 8. For more details, go to britishhomesawards.com.
All the award winners and commended schemes will be announced on September 19 — and the results will be covered in Home.