Inside Britain's happiest eco-town

It's not every day that you glimpse a vision of the future. And it's all the more surprising for this vision to consist of a group of houses made not with hi-tech steel, glass and concrete, but with an altogether more old-fashioned material: wood. As the road ahead bends and the new houses come into view, it's hard not to be thrilled at the thought that finally someone's really thinking about what an eco-village should be.

It is not simply that the design of The Wintles is a beautiful combination of local vernacular and modern aesthetics. You get the sense that there is something else special about these homes. Absent are the regimented lines of modern, soulless housing estates. Instead, about 12 houses of various shapes and sizes are clustered in a circle around a small communal green.

With me is Bob Tomlinson, the man who thought up the masterplan for this site, just outside Bishop's Castle, in Shropshire. For him, eco-thinking runs deeper than the inclusion of solar panels and windmills strapped to chimneys. For a start, there's all that wood, which isn't just there to create a groovy rustic vibe. Many eco-developments, once closely examined, prove to be little more than houses with concrete-riddled designs, higher levels of insulation than normal and a token cycle park. And that's really not in the spirit of things – the concrete industry accounts for 5 per cent of total global carbon dioxide emissions (that's even more than aviation).

But more than just selecting the right materials, a sense of healthy community is one key feature Tomlinson tried to build into The Wintles. Tomlinson feels that modern estate housing does not encourage people to put down roots and create good communities. The modern habit of moving home, on average, every seven years comes at a huge cost to the environment. Not only does it damage human relationships, but a huge amount of waste is created in the constant redecorating and refurnishing generated by this housing carousel.

"We are using this site as a test bed for a revolution in eco-building," says Tomlinson. "The old village has been around since the time of the Domesday Book, and it was the fact that it has been successful as a community for so long that inspired us to look at the reasons for its success." Tomlinson is passionate in his belief that an eco-town must not only be built using the latest low-carbon technologies but must also engender a sense of place, to be a town that will work from one generation to the next and be able to feed and clothe itself from local products.

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