A number of families and children lived in the village.Britta Burger/ All rights reserved.A 15 minute drive from the elite environs of Windsor Castle and Eton College are the beautiful woods and water-meadows of Runnymede.
Until last week, if you had visited this historic site, you would have found 30-40 people living in an array of shacks and homes, many beautifully made from recycled materials. They lived sustainably there for three years: heating their homes with coppiced sycamore, using water from a spring and growing or ‘skipping’ their food. Now those people are homeless and all that remains of their lives there is some splintered wood, smashed up wattle and daub, and belongings strewn across the forest floor.
All the homes were built from recycled materials. Britta Burger/ All rights reserved.The destruction was unleashed by bailiffs on behalf of the Royalton Group- an off-shored luxury property developers- who bought the land for £47 million and intend to build a high-end gated community there called the Magna Carta Park. It’s not news that the wishes of global capital trump all others but we might pause and reflect how, in a Tory heartland, in the fifth biggest economy in the world, such a miniature shanty town came to exist.
