I am indebted to Cotswold Life for some news about the part of Gloucestershire in which Lower Mill Estate is located. The article intriguingly offers a home insurance and celebrity assessment of Gloucestershire, broken down by postcode.

The serious side to this story is about what the home insurance men make of the area. They’re not interested in celebrity. All they worry about is calculating insurance premiums. In which case, parts of Gloucestershire (remember Tewkesbury?) are highly unpopular down at Direct Line, if not uninsurable owing to problems over flooding. £10,000 excesses are not uncommon now.

You’d think we might be concerned down here at Lower Mill Estate, but actually, there are no additional or onerous premiums loaded onto the properties here at all. That’s because way back when we started working on the site, we invested £700,000 in a flood alleviation scheme. Last year, when large parts of the county were completely swamped, we experienced no flooding whatsoever. Not a drop. The flood alleviation scheme also saved the nearby village of Somerford Keynes.

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Down at the Lower Mill Estate we actively encourage conservation, and we try to ensure that wildlife can thrive in every possible way.

This past weekend quite a few of the community - and particularly some of the younger members - got together, in a small marquee, next to the local shop, to assist the birdlife in and around the estate by creating a whole array of new nest-boxes of all shapes and sizes. It’s part of a partnership between Lower Mill Estate and the Cotswold Waterpark Society (CWS).

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You may remember I talked about domestic observatories: building some star-gazing technology into a brand new house. Well now you have it. It’s in CGI at the moment, but it could be in bricks and mortar very soon. Just say the word.

Stop press.  News of the Nightingale Reserve project has barely been out a week, but 20% of the properties (three out of fifteen) have already been reserved pre-launch.  I talk in percentages because one of the people who’s come forward - quite apart from loving the whole idea of it - tells me that property in Gloucestershire is seen as a safe haven for cash and if he sells it, with capital gains on vacation property being reduced from 40% to 18%, it makes very neat financial sense.  But what’s most important to me is that he enjoys the property and the concept, and all the signs from enquirers so far show that that’s very, very much the case.

Just in - some more CGIs of the fifteen properties we’re building in the Nightingale Reserve