Guess what?  - there are no government incentives or grants at all for tread lightly – not really doing much are they?

‘I often forget for long periods that Lower Mill Estate is actually a family business,’ says Jeremy Paxton. ‘For me it’s where I live most of the time, where I and my family work and where I’ve concentrated almost two decades of passion and hard labour. I don’t even really see myself as a “developer” in the traditional sense.’

Even when it was a glimmer in the former magazine publisher’s eye, this extraordinary eco-icon, private nature reserve, holiday settlement and architectural showpiece sited around seven lakes in 650 acres of prime Cotswold countryside, was a mission more than it was a business idea.
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There are, as has been famously said, known unknowns and unknown unknowns.

One of the most remarkable things that has developed at Lower Mill Estate since its founding, and that Jeremy Paxton readily admits he wasn’t really expecting, is the way a real community has developed both on the estate as a whole – and in the distinct, individual villages that it is built around.

The community has attracted the attention and applause of academics, of journalists and property writers and notably of  Kevin McCloud of Channel 4’s Grand Designs.
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Hundreds of acres of lush, unspoilt Gloucestershire countryside to roam at will. Thousands of wildlife species to observe and enjoy. Lakes where even on a busy bank holiday, you can often row, fish or swim on your own. Groups of houses cosily nestled in among it all.

It could almost be a scene from Laurie Lee’s Gloucestershire childhood, just updated a little so the honey coloured Cotswold cottages are now exciting modernist homes with broadband and all the latest 21st century green accoutrements.
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“This guy is worth watching he will be the UK’s young architect of the year I think – he did the hide for me before he qualified and it is genius”

http://www.ardesignstudio.co.uk/images/estationery/newsletter0409.htm

jeremy paxton

There’s no question in my mind that over the next decade, energy performance is increasingly going to drive building.

We had the Prince’s Trust down to see us the other day for first sight of a coming development at Lower Mill which is going to be known as Treadlightly.

Treadlightly is going to consist of 24 detached houses - all in 0.86 of an acre and in the shape, if you happened to be looking from Space, in the form of a giant left footprint.

All of the toes of the footprint are little ponds that are swimming holes, whereas the big bit of the sole is the lake with natural filtration and the houses are all around this.

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The first HUFHAUS at the Lower Mill Estate  - a fantastic opportunity to build pretty much any Hufhaus at the estate has opened up due to Richard Reid and I designing a fantastic south facing Island that is surrounded by water and can (when it shines) get all day sun.

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“Frenchie has just arrived as the new community addition to serve all sizes (and ages) of children – she is, I am assured, the original one from the movie Grease – does anyone remember her?”

If I were showing off, I’d say I had a blinding flash of inspiration that summer’s day in 1994 when I was bimbling around the skies over the Cotswolds in my then R22 and spotted something intriguing 1,500 feet below me.

I’d tell an amazing but quite untrue story that when I looked down on the series of deserted, overgrown lakes below, I decided on the spot that I would turn it into a globally recognised nature reserve housing an idyllic upmarket vacation village studded discreetly with some of the world’s leading modernist architecture.

But no. Actually, I landed for a sandwich, a bit of a snooze and a swim.

And it was the flying, which is fantastic in this part of the country,  that in many senses was the tail that wagged the dog which would, as the years passed, slowly morph into Lower Mill Estate.

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