Extract 5 – The Battle of the Benders
In the fourth extract from my book I visit an off-grid community in Devon which is currently fighting a planning permission battle – on behalf of all of us – for the right to buy some land and build off-grid, low-impact houses.
Land Matters: a question of permission
A few hundred yards down the steep, winding lane, at the bottom of the hill by a stream, was a gate bearing a hand-painted sign that said Land Matters. I executed a ten-point turn onto the land and parked alongside a car and another van. From there it was half a mile up another hill into the heart of classic Devon countryside, as beautiful a piece of England as you could ever find. It was a hot day and the birds were trilling madly, together with a few crows. The hills rolled away into the distance, each a collection of small fields, and we could hear echoes from farm machinery across the steep valley which presumably meant they could hear us too. Other than the nameplate on the gate, the only indication of human habitation was a black Darth Vader-shaped letterbox mounted incongruously on the fence leading into the second field.
We continued up the hill, through a gap in a hedge, and there was something quite startling and eye-catching about what I saw next. At the top of the hill, ten benders stood in a loose oval formation around a large field. Benders have been used for centuries by the rural poor. The 1880 Census recorded 11,000 in use, and there were probably just as many that went unrecorded. They were made popular again during the road protests of the 1990s. They are constructed out of anything available, but mostly have a canvas covering pegged down over a structure of willow or ash branches. These benders had recycled domestic windows built into them, and wooden duckboard flooring covered with carpets to raise them above ground level. The field was surrounded by high bushes and a few trees which lent some shelter to the benders, which were ten to twelve feet high. Some had fences around them to give the impression of a front garden a little personal space within the wider commune, perhaps, or a way of creating a sense of smallness and domesticity on this exposed hilltop.
Directly opposite the gate, up against the hedgerow on the other side of the field, was the largest of the structures, a kitchen tent with a fire circle to the left of it. A couple of people were cooking over the smoking fire. Solar panels abounded, leaned up against the bender walls or on frames standing in the field, tied down to the ground against the wind. But for these few touches of modernity, it was a timeless scene, almost Hardyesque. It was certainly about as far from the madding crowd as you could ever get in southern England.
As I sat in the fire circle that night, with Fiona wheezing in the Bus and even Caitlin suffering from the damp, I too felt the flu coming on. Thankfully there was a kettle boiling on a fire-stand made of three horseshoes welded together on thin metal legs, and I accepted a cup of herb tea offered by a voice out of the darkness. I was grateful because I could sense the group was wary of me, an emissary from the straight world. Id arrived just after they were denounced by the local Tory MP, and they felt like they were being watched. Their move to the land had been a bid for obscurity; now they were locked in the grid of planning permission bureaucracy.
The locals think we are getting one over on them as they sit in their million-pound houses, said a voice in the darkness.
I think they want us to pay council tax, said Charlotte with a throaty chuckle.
Well, were not paying council tax, said another.
Charlotte, a veteran of the hippy movement, an attractive forty-something with greying blonde hair, gave me the background. She had a serious, almost monotonous way of speaking, and ended each sentence with a pouting movement of her lips as if challenging me to refute or interrupt her. Charlotte had worked as a copy editor in London for a while, and then moved to Totnes, the nearest town, where she had various admin jobs. She still shares a flat there with other members of the co-op. They bedded down there during the early days of the commune when there was little or nothing in the way of facilities, and they sometimes still do in the winter.
Three years on, there did not seem to be as much progress as I would have expected. There was a small vegetable plot near the kitchen tent, and another half an acre of vegetables in the neighbouring field, but little evidence of cultivation anywhere else, so I am not sure it passes the Lizzie Purchase test, even though it is neat and tidy.
There was a maypole in the middle of the field, left over from a spring festival held a few days earlier. I was sorry to miss it as I imagined the place had been thronging with merry local villagers dancing in lockstep with their bender-dwelling hosts. But contrary to my speculation, the party had been attended mainly by visitors from other eco-communities and friends of the settlers, from Totnes, London and elsewhere.
I needed to use the toilet, and was directed through some bushes and across to the other side of the next field. I smelled the composting loo before I saw it. I took a deep breath and opened the door, then changed my mind and decided to wait for another opportunity.
By the time I returned to the fire, it was smoking badly. I was dodging and closing my eyes against the stinging smoke whipped towards each of us in turn by a changing wind. They had been there three years, but they were burning green logs. I felt a sudden concern at the hardship they were enduring. Notwithstanding the smoky fire, it was all pleasant enough in the height of summer, but what did they do when the weather turned really cold, other than huddle in their benders, only some of which were fully finished with inviting wood-stoves, or decamp to Totnes?
The most impractical element of Land Matters set-up was the water supply, which was hand-carried from a stream at the bottom of the hill half a mile away. The local MP had denounced a grant of 4,000 from the Big Lottery Fund for the purpose of drilling a borehole. These are a group of nomads, he fulminated, they should not be allowed to set up their camp. As they discussed the possibility of using a donkey to turn a hand pump, once the borehole was eventually drilled, I wondered why they had not just used a couple of water pumps and a reservoir halfway up the hill to bring up water from the stream at the bottom. In a conversation with me, one local pointed out where the commune had really gone wrong: They put their living spaces up on the top of the hill where its bitter in winter, instead of on a sheltered slope. And they planted their vegetable patch next to the houses on the worst soil. They should have it down near the stream where the best soil is.
Even the purchase of the land itself had been a sort of accident. Christian Taylor had the original idea after he won a sealed-bid auction he had entered more to understand the market and to practise bidding than with any expectation of actually buying anything. He came away owning forty-two acres of prime Devon countryside for 60,000 or so. He contacted his mates, and they all paid 3,000 each into a Housing Co-operative, the legal entity that owns the land. Everyone who joined committed to living there and devoting their time to making Land Matters a fully functioning, sustainable settlement. Christian made the first down payment, but when the contract was signed and the rest of the money paid over, it was in the name of Land Matters. This was the first inkling the local villagers could have had that things might not be as they seemed. Now the villagers were furious that Land Matters had been less than honest about their plans, and I was thinking that what I would learn from Land Matters was how not to live off-grid. The combination of lackadaisical planning and a lack of community relations made me pessimistic about their chances of making a go of it. Still, in a way I had to admire the impracticality of it all. These are, after all, some of the most idealistic people in Britain, who have transmuted their anger with the road system into a sincere attempt to live out their ideals. Despite the shortcomings that had struck me, they were certainly making a better go of it than I could, if I ever dared to try.
Other figures joined us around the fire: Josh, a musician responsible for the market garden; Ollie, the groups technical wizard; and Robin, who I later discovered had been named Prince of Wales organic gardener of the year in 2002. He was the most thoughtful member of the group, with a highly developed philosophy of the natural world. He spent hours practising his bushcraft skills in the woods below. Young, focused and clean cut, he was the perfect spokesman for Land Matters.
I persisted in trying to draw out their story. For the first year the co-op did little beyond visiting and watching what happened on the land through the changing seasons and thinking about how to organise their commune. They were aware that the villagers might object if they knew what the co-op was planning, so they didnt tell them. When the Land Matters crew finally moved in they built their benders at night, and swiftly; when the villagers finally found out, because someone was searching for a lost sheep, they felt they had been misled. That meant the village immediately formed an opposition to the incomers. It was a bad start.
The Land Matters planning application was quickly rejected by the council, and a planning inspector held a public inquiry in March 2007. Planning inspectors are there to provide a dispassionate decision, applying national standards free of the prejudices or favouritism of local council politics. They are, however, a priesthood, with no obligation publicly to justify the criteria they apply in reaching their decisions. Journalists are not permitted to interview them, but I searched for a way into their secret world. They are appointed by the National Planning Inspectorate, which comes under the Department for Communities and Local Government. Both bodies refused to offer any help or advice in how to contact an inspector.
The locals in Allaleigh expected that the benders would be allowed to stay, for a few years at least, with the same kind of temporary permission as had been granted to Steward Wood. I was not so sure. I thought that the combination of the powerful elite lined up against them and the lack of significant progress in cultivating the land, plus the tiny narrow lanes that barely supported the existing car population, would all count against them at the public inquiry. And the fact that some in the group had identified themselves on their planning application as lacking agricultural skills meant they might have trouble arguing that they were actively working the land. Now that the local Tory had found he could win easy brownie points in the community by speaking out against them, they were on the defensive. They werent even sure they should be talking to me. They had a figurative as well as a literal mountain to climb.
With all three of us wheezing and snuffling, we decided to head back towards London the following day. But I knew I would return to Allaleigh for two reasons. Firstly, Robin had invited me back to learn more about foraging. He said he would show me dozens of edible and medicinal herbs and flowers and teach me how to walk like a fox a bushcraft technique for treading lightly on the land. I also needed to meet Land Matters opponents. Planning permission was clearly one of the key elements in the struggle to live off-grid (see chapter seven). I wanted to understand the mentality behind the widespread resistance to what I saw as a completely harmless and forward-looking idea, even when it was executed rather chaotically, as seemed to be happening at Land Matters.
A few weeks later I was back in Devon. There had been at least one national newspaper article on the subject by this time, and the residents of Allaleigh (population twenty-four) now found themselves, or saw themselves, in the spotlight. A little work with the local phone book gave me the number of the house where I had stopped to ask the way on my first visit. It was owned by celebrated restaurateur and food writer Tom Jaine.
If Tom was surprised by my phone call he certainly didnt show it. Here was a man who stood accused of pettifogging narrow-mindedness, of failing to understand or to welcome the strangers in his midst, but who responded to my phone call with an instant invitation to visit. Youre writing about the hippies! he roared down the phone. Well, yes, come over, come over. Of course.
Would his wife remember me? I wondered as I beetled over in the Bus.
On closer inspection, the ancient hamlet was as immaculate as it had seemed at first. The outstanding feature was a complete absence of parking spaces. The narrow lanes in and out were bounded by walls, and even where the roads met there was only just room for two cars to pass. As the roads entered the hamlet, high hedgerows gave way to high dry-stone walls and fine detached houses. Tom had the most prominent, a double-fronted white mansionette with a lovingly tended front garden and views across the valley to a wood of hundred-year-old oaks.
I stopped outside and rang the bell. If Mrs Jaine recognised me, she showed no sign of it as she greeted me in the front garden, this time without the dogs. She introduced herself as Sally; her husband would join us shortly. I had squeezed the Bus as tightly as I could next to the garden wall but this was not enough for Tom, who appeared at the front gate apparently beside himself with excitement, although I soon learned that his strange jigging was a default behaviour. Good heavens, whats this? Is it really as close as you can? Will the neighbours pass? I had to confess that they might not. Another few feet in, I think. I leapt back into the drivers seat and manoeuvred even closer to the wall, trying to position the Bus so that it would intrude only minimally into the crossroads. Once this implicit admonishment had been dealt with, I was ushered in.
Tom was tall, thin as a rake, with a high balding dome of a head. He blared rather than talked, and in his buttonless designer shirt he bobbed and swayed about continuously, punctuating his sentences with guffaws and snorts. He had spent the hour between my phone call and my arrival checking me out on Google, I learned as he showed me through the well-stocked kitchen and simultaneously introduced himself. Now in their late fifties, the couple had bought Allaleigh House in 1983 and for twenty-one years had lived in one of the quietest corners of England. Cars rarely passed, except for the neighbours. The occasional cyclist or walker was the only stranger they ever expected to see. And now this.
It was seven oclock, and I had feared being drawn into pre-dinner cocktails. To my relief I was not offered so much as a glass of water, but led straight into a formal sitting room with each cushion and magazine arranged at precise intervals and parallel with the surface it was on. The couple placed themselves in two white armchairs facing each other but slightly turned towards me. I sat on the matching sofa. The conversation that followed was largely between Tom and Sally. I was allowed to ask questions, but otherwise I was more like a spectator to their dialogue.
As soon as his bum touched the seat, Tom got on to the subject of my visit. Of course possession is nine tenths of the law, was his opening remark. Once youre in situ you can adopt the moral high ground. Anybody who disagrees with you is making eighteen people homeless and thrusting them onto the rates. He harrumphed at Sally, who pursed her lips as if she was about to disagree. But before she could say anything he was off again.
The essence of his argument emerged slowly between tumultuous but good-humoured shouts of rage and frustration. If it had been one or two households then he would have had no problem, he said. Sally agreed. We thought they might camp there for a week or two a year, she said, but nine households, none of whom had any background of working on the land, was in Toms opinion clear evidence of a scam being perpetrated on the local council. There are so many you feel it might double again, Sally chipped in. Tom was more specific. We couldnt object to the present numbers, he told his wife. They dont impinge on us, but in five years, if they all have 2.4 children there will be twenty-five people up there. How will ambulances or the fire brigade get up and down these narrow lanes? What happens when they get E. coli and start asking for water to be piped in? He had now worked himself up into a real state. Its bonkers, just unacceptable. I certainly would not tell Tom and Sally what I had just learned on my visit to Land Matters that three of the women were pregnant, and within nine months there would be four children living on the hill. The population explosion had already started.
The conspiracy theorists in the village, said Tom, expected the initial temporary planning permission to be followed by a further application for temporary permission for upgraded homes. Further upgrades would follow over the years, and then theyll all bugger off with a million quid. Over the years, Tom had opposed every single barn conversion in the area, and together with other residents had managed to buy up land to prevent the expansion of a nearby golf course. He had seen two farms go in the previous two decades, one to the golf course and another to become some sort of activity centre for kids. Golf courses, hippies its all the same thing. Shoot the lot of them! he roared in tones that no doubt went down a storm at the local village fte. But he had also done his research: he quoted Paul Waddingtons book The 21st-Century Smallholder as evidence that you need a largish group if you are trying to cultivate a piece of land without chemicals.
Despite the colourful way of putting his argument, I felt Tom could not be dismissed as a knee-jerk scaremonger. He admitted himself that his opposition to developers was partly nimbyism an acronym, of course, for Not In My Back Yard but nimbyism, he maintained, was one of the finest and most British of feelings. To some extent Tom blamed the small farmers for failing to manage their land properly and ending up in a situation where they were forced to sell. But he also cited the farmers as examples of why local resentment against the hippies at Land Matters had run so high. His neighbour, a hard-working farmer, had recently applied for planning permission for an agricultural cottage, but he was turned down. A real farmer with a real son who wanted to build him a house on land that he owned, Tom shouted at his wife, and he lost.
I suggested that perhaps places like Allaleigh could be treated in the same way as agricultural cottages, which received planning permission only for so long as its residents had some form of employment on the land. No, Tom countered. There were two agricultural cottages nearby, one inhabited by a motor mechanic and the other by an emphysemic trustafarian who is selling, for 220,000, because he cannot get up the stairs any longer. They are not working the land, said Tom, any more than the hippies are working the land theres nothing going on up there. He rocked back and forth like a rabbi at prayer. Tom had seen the planning application, and I hadnt, so I could hardly contradict him when he told Sally, They are all from W4 or Totnes or Brighton.
It was now about 8 p.m., and time to go. As I drove down the hill I realised I was heading back directly towards the Land Matters co-op. I was sure, for no good reason, that my departing vehicle was being watched from Toms top window, and much as I wanted to stop I decided to go straight past the hippies. As part of their campaign to win planning permission, they had to be careful not to be seen to be generating traffic, and my ungainly bus squeezing down the narrow lane would not help their cause. So I passed the Land Matters gate and stopped at the next pull-in I found, a solitary barn, in use but deserted now until at least 6 a.m. I would be awake by then as I wanted to reach Somerset by breakfast time.
Off-grid Olympians
Fox buys John Twelve Hawks
Take a walk on the wild side….
Robin hood tax pressure grows
Fight to stop the new Super-Grid
Up in the Air
Soccer’s swampy bugs out
Living for free
Johnson & Johnson zillionairess dies, ignored by family
