Half Teletubbies, half The Prisoner: The Wintles, Bishop's Castle

Half Teletubbies, half The Prisoner, The Wintles stands on the edge of Bishop's Castle. It was developed by a decade ago by The Living Village Trust:

We thought the best way of proving that it is possible to design a new village with the ambiance and attractiveness of a well loved place was to build it. We were very clear that we didn’t want to create a pastiche of an old village which would be a pointless exercise. We wanted to build a contemporary village with a very human feel to it.

It is not a village. It is part of the town - Bishop's Castle is too small to have suburbs.

And wandering around the town to kill time before for dinner, I explored The Wintles. It came on to rain, so I spent a while there sheltering.

In all that time I saw no one. It was the summer and people will have been on holiday, as I was.

But there was something odd about it's quietness. I had the same experience and feeling in Leicester's new suburb of Hamilton.

Maybe I just grew up in an age where children played out and have lived into one where they do not..

I can remember there being signs up in Bishop's Castle protesting against the development at The Wintles, though it may not have been this scheme in particular the writers had in mind.

Looking through my files I do not have photos from that era, but - as the last one here shows - I do have photos of these houses being built.