Living the green dream:

by David Hoppit

Jeremy Harrall has a dream. He knows he can’t save the world (well, not immediately) but he aims to make his Lincolnshire homeland the greenest, most environmentally friendly place in Great Britain — and his dream is already becoming reality.

Jeremy, an award-winning doctor of architecture, started realising the dream in 2002 by rolling up his sleeves and building his own earth-covered home and office close to the little town of Long Sutton, near The Wash, wheeling hundreds of barrow loads of Lincolnshire soil to cover the solid concrete structure.

Drive along the road towards Gedney and, if you glance left by a bus stop, you might see a shrub-covered  hillock, which anywhere else in UK would not seem unusual; but this is Lincolnshire, where hillocks hardly happen.

The structure, more like a giant mole hill than a house, is probably the ‘greenest’ house in Great Britain and it has been home ever since to Jeremy, his wife Kay and three children, Penelope, aged 15, Royston 14 and Molly, who is 12.

The trial was so successful that this summer his practice, SEArch Ltd (sustainable ecological architects), teamed up with Lincolnshire Rural Housing Association to design a community for six families in a remarkable experimental village nearby, named Unity Gardens.

Nearly 50 families answered a small local advertisement for volunteers to occupy the earth-bunded homes (a veritable mumbling of molehills) and the list was eventually whittled down to just six. What they were letting themselves in for, very willingly, was a dose of the good life with knobs on.

The pioneers are having their lifestyles and energy consumption monitored and recorded and they also agreed to grow their own fruit and vegetables on the ample allotments at the rear of the development. Some have already built chicken houses for egg and meat production.

The adult residents of Unity Gardens (the site was bought from the Odd Fellows) represent a spread of ages, from 30 to nearly 70, but all are having a honeymoon period in their new homes. The children range from toddlers to teenagers.

Families at Unity Gardens enjoyed massive savings on energy costs during the first few weeks of occupation. The shared 35 foot wind turbine and solar panels produced five times the energy they needed, bringing each of them an income of about £40 a month from electricity sold to the national grid.

Taken over the year, including winter months, they are expecting to pay nothing for their electricity. The earth-covered bungalows, which cost little more than conventional houses, have huge south-facing windows to capture the sun’s warmth, with high thermal mass walls surrounded by a further 12 inches of wall, floor and ceiling insulation.

The aim is for the houses to be what Jeremy calls “autonomous” – or at least as near autonomous as possible. Each house ‘harvests’ rain water, stored in large underground tanks, which is used for flushing toilets and supplying washing machines.

“We have evolved into a happy, sharing community, each keeping an eye on the children and the properties, so if we forget to lock up it doesn’t really matter,” says 61-year-old Barbara Holmes.

“We have all thrown ourselves into the good life with enthusiasm. I make bread every day and we all save as much water as we can for irrigating the allotments.”

Barbara’s husband Steven (51) was equally enthusiastic. “We had a 1950s two-bedroom ground floor council flat in Spalding, but people upstairs were noisy. I used to get home from work, plonk down in front of the telly and go to sleep.

“Now, as soon as I can, I’m out on the allotment, whatever the weather. Our lives have been completely changed by this move – changed for the better.”

The six bungalows have either two bedrooms or three and tenants pay weekly rents of between £80 and £83 to the housing association. The development is not far from shops in Long Sutton and Wisbech is a short bus ride away. The Ship public house is just 300 yards down the road.

One of the youngest residents is 33-year-old Claire Lovett, who moved to the community with partner Clive and daughters Maisie, aged six and Charlotte, who is three, on July 17^th, the same day as the rest of the families.

Strolling round the allotments we marvelled at her girls’ ‘champion’ sunflowers.

“We moved in on a day when there was a tornado, with hail and lightning; but since then life here has been idyllic – we all love the houses and the sense of community,” said Claire.

Nearby Andy Thompson, aged 30, his wife Jo’ann and eight-year-old son Frank were collecting the day’s supply of eggs from the flock of Black Rock hens, before earthing up the leeks and hoeing the football sized cabbages.

“We love it here and spend most of our spare time pottering on the allotment. The house is snug and bright and we are pretty well self sufficient…the best move that we could possibly have made,” said electrical engineer Andy.

At present the six houses have a strange appearance – beautiful they are not; but as the shrubs and ivy planted in the earth banks grow and mature they will dissolve into the rural scene, with only the wind turbine betraying the existence of a community.

The houses are beside what Jeremy calls “a living street”, which he says provides vehicle and pedestrian compatibility. There are no hard kerbs or official parking places, freeing up the street for recreational and pedestrian use.

The houses achieve virtually zero heating status, with vastly reduced CO² emissions. They are Code 5 in the new building regulation category but are actually more environmentally friendly than the top Code 6.

“Perversely, the coding does not promote environmentally friendly property and it actually penalises houses such as these because they use little or no fossil fuels,” commented Dr Harrall.

His crusade is now gathering pace. Soon he hopes to build 49 more conventional houses near Unity Gardens (“better boxes”, he calls them) and already two families have completed self-build “molehills”, one overlooking Rutland Water and the other near East Tudenham, in Norfolk.

Jeremy and his practice SEArch is also spearheading a campaign which he calls “Greening the box”. Working alongside Wherry Housing Association he is taking a poorly insulated 1920s three-bedroom semi and turning it into a truly energy efficient home. The aim is to demonstrate to the housing industry that it is cheaper and more environmentally friendly to up-grade existing housing stock than it is to demolish and rebuild.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 27th, 2009 at 6:21 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.