Chain stores are few and far between on Fore Street, the steep hill that is the main shopping and social focus in the south Devon town of Totnes.
Instead, organic greengrocers vie for attention with vegetarian restaurants, while a disposable coffin adorns the window of a 'green' funeral parlour. And how many high streets can boast more than one reiki spiritual healing centre?
Totnes has just 8,500 residents, but a big reputation for chic Bohemianism and alternative lifestyles that draws in people from across the world: an Indian entrepreneur is starting a tuk-tuk (motorised rickshaw) taxi firm using bio-fuel cabs, and some Americans run an organic clothing shop selling jumpers made from the fleeces of local sheep.
There's even a 'Totnes pound', a currency accepted by 55 local shops and businesses. In theory, it encourages people to spend local money on local produce in local stores - thus avoiding 'food miles' spent transporting tomatoes, spuds and leeks. Now that mix of environmental awareness and new-age radicalism is having an impact on the local property market.
'When interesting people rub shoulders as in Totnes, something unusual is created. So there are a lot of fascinating and unique homes here,' says Michael Rose, a designer who has worked in the town for 15 years. His own house is a case in point. Built in 1965 as a two-bedroom bungalow, it has been turned into a three-bedroom property with space for a home worker, thanks to an environmentally friendly extension that Rose built in the mid-Nineties.
'It's been praised by the Housing Corporation's Sustainable Homes Commission and I've retro-fitted some of the green features on to the older part of the building. I even made the lime-wash paint myself,' he says.
The property, now on the market for £393,000, ticks plenty of green boxes with its renewable and reclaimed timber, solar glazing, gas-condensing boiler and 'uncontaminated natural garden with much wildlife', according to greenmoves.co.uk, the eco website where it is advertised. |
