King Charles and Queen Camilla arrive in Poundbury

Poundbury, Dorset, is like any other southern English village: it has a rotary club filled with enthusiastic residents; it has its own local magazine; it has regular community get-togethers. It even has an annual food and art festival.

But, unlike other villages, none of Poundbury’s residents can trace their family lineage in the locality back more than 30 years.

This is because the development of Poundbury only got underway in 1993, the vision and brainchild of King Charles III.

It is owned by Charles’s Duchy of Cornwall estate — established hundreds of years ago to provide a private income — which leads all growth and progress in the village, often with a tight leash.

Poundbury is due for completion in 2026, but much of its northern quarter remains enveloped in a building site.

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Yet, the village itself is finished, complete with shops, restaurants, cafes and other small, aesthetically similar independent businesses.

Envisioned by Charles as the future of living in Britain, Poundbury has had its fair share of criticism.

As recently as late 2019 some the village as lacking something they couldn’t quite put their finger on. In an ITV two-part documentary, one resident said they didn’t think Poundbury “had a soul”, while another said it was more like living on a film set: “When you come for the first time it feels like a film set and you can’t really believe anyone lives here.”

Fast-forward to today and things seem to have changed.

Vicky, the owner of YARD boutique in Poundbury, told Express.co.uk that the village had been unfairly compared to other, older and more urbanised settlements nearby.

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“People tell me it’s like a ghost town every day,” she said. “But I tell them it’s a predominately residential area, there’s not a town centre, so it’s not like being on a high street, you don’t see that many people walking about.”

Charles has said the idea behind Poundbury was to build a community rather than “another housing estate”. This, it appears, he has achieved. Yet, he has acknowledged the fierce criticism.

He previously said: “Everybody was against it, and in the end, I was determined to stick to my guns.

“I got on regardless of the endless criticism… because I’ve always believed in the long-term. I wanted to make sure that this time we did it in a more sustainable way.”

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A labour of love, Charles regularly drops in to see how Poudbury is coming along, the most recent visit coming in late June when he and Queen Camilla dropped in on residents.

Vicky says his visits are regular and can come often at short notice, she herself having hosted the King with no prior notice.

“About 11 years ago, when we first opened, Charles was on an official walk around with his team,” she said.

“We weren’t on his list of stops, but he came up the side street next to the shop and decided he was going to drop in, spontaneously, and come and have a look around.

“He spent 15 minutes chatting to us and all the customers. He was very, very lovely and made everyone feel relaxed.”

Vicky owns the building that YARD is in and has been there for around 13 years.

In the early days, she says, she was required to get approval from the developers for the shop’s signage and exterior design.

“There was a kind of booklet on what they wanted, what feel they wanted to continue throughout Poundbury, for it to have a similar, coherent feel,” she explained.

Some residents have lamented such controls the Duchy of Cornwall has over the village.

In the documentary, one resident told of some of the obstacles they had faced since moving in: “There’s a lot of rules and regulations. Like, for instance, some people can’t even have satellite dishes.”

Lèon Krier, Poundbury’s lead architect and designer, was eager to filter in the architectural philosophy known as ‘New Urbanism’, which sees settlements designed around a sense of community, similar to towns and villages developed pre-World War 2.

Thirty years into the build and there are now more than 4,600 people living and 2,400 people working in Poundbury.

While there are community groups and societies, clubs for hobbies and weekly Parkruns, arts and foods festivals and toddler playgroups, for some, Poundbury may always be an eerily quiet place that never quite seems real.

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