Escape to the country: Retreat East

After spending the week navigating the city's bustling streets, breathing in its polluted air and being squashed in like sardines on the daily commute, the appeal of a countryside bolthole is easy to understand. However, often what starts as a dream of idyllic weekend escapes can turn into a logistical nightmare as the costs and time involved in maintaining a property remotely quickly mount up. From a wider perspective, more serious still is the impact that second homes can have on the surrounding community as locals are priced out, areas left half empty and economies thrown into flux.

This was a key motivator behind Retreat East, a new destination in rural Suffolk spearheaded by sustainable development specialist Dominic Richards. Its debenture model allows would-be owners the opportunity to purchase a lifetime stake from £10,000, which gets you 10 nights stay per year in one of the designer barns on the 35-acre private site, alongside unlimited use of its members-only facilities. Benefits include a high-end spa and gym and access to an entertainment wing complete with bar, private dining and screening room, while fridges are stocked with organic produce from the on-site kitchen garden and orchard.

"The Suffolk coast, North Norfolk, Devon and Cornwall have all got the same problem in that in-season it's very busy, and in off-season it's very quiet. And a lot of young people are priced out of buying their first home in the country because London's got so much purchasing power," says Richards. "And I thought, apart from the hassle factor, it's much more sustainable for those people to share a big project, where they've also got the added bonus of room service and a bar and all the things you wouldn't normally have in your own place, but you don't take 500 homes out of the community as well. It's a sharing economy view of how we can use assets more efficiently."

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Certified by the Soil Association as a fully organic site, the farm has been put together with environmental concerns in mind, down to the energy-efficient buildings built using natural and sustainable materials including reclaimed bricks, carefully sourced wood and sheep wool insulation. It is an ethos that Richards, a former vice chairman of The Prince's Foundation for Building Community, is set to carry through with his new property company Our Place, with initial projects including three new developments in Norwich and London. Among these is Spitalfields Works, which will bring new housing, pop-ups shops and shared working spaces to a previously derelict street in this corner of East London. When complete, it will be a further bonus to those in the capital who are members of Retreat East, with access to a spa alongside a restaurant and deli that sources its produce from the Suffolk farm.

"I've long admired that The Prince of Wales has always stood for mixed use, walkable neighbourhoods and respecting local identity, so I've really cut my teeth on doing that for the last 20 years," explains Richards. "Now we're doing it commercially and at scale to prove that you can make a fair return but also be really proud of what you do and leave the built environment in a better place than you found it."

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