Saturday, January 24, 2026
King Charles' forgotten Hamlet
Coed Darcy is a new estate built on the old BP works in Llandarcy. St Modwen, the developer behind the project and the owner of the entire 1,000 acre Coed Darcy site, originally announced a 25-year vision for a £1.2bn, 4000-home 'urban village' with 10,000 residents and four schools, however the development stalled and so far only has a few hundred houses, a play area and an empty shop.
The estate was meant to be a model of urban renewal, but before the development started in earnest, the company tasked with transforming the area, decided to pay homage to the then Prince Charles' interest in 'classic' architecture. The BBC even did a news piece on the hamlet fronted by Griff Rhys Jones, which can be viewed here.
Wales-on-line tells us that not far from the current community, nestled amidst green fields, scrubland and trees is a quaint little hamlet of red and grey-roofed homes. There are streets, something that looks like it could be a little school or community hall and some ponds:
The white-fronted buildings look pretty with their different coloured brightly painted doors and neat windows.
Look for any length of time, and you won't see a single person. No lights will illuminate the windows on an evening, and there won't be a sound to be heard, other than the wind or the steady thrashing of rain we've become accustomed to of late.
In fact, if you are anywhere near you will have had to traipse over rough ground, as there are no proper roads leading to this ghost community.
The houses were built on the site of the former BP oil refinery in Llandarcy, Neath, in 2013, with traditional Welsh stone and using cutting-edge construction techniques.
They were designed as a showcase for an environmentally sustainable village made up of thousands of new homes, and even had the backing of Prince Charles.
But six years since they were built, these particular homes, distant from other development on the massive old industrial site, remain empty with no infrastructure connected to them.
In fact, more than a decade on from when the plans were first submitted in 2006, just 250 homes have been built in the new village named Coed Darcy.
The original vision was for the empty houses to be part of an environmentally-sustainable urban village of 4,000 homes, similar to Prince Charles' Poundbury village in Dorset.
The Prince even visited the site himself when they were completed in 2013.
He said he was "trying to break the commercial mould with the kind of challenges the world is now facing," by backing the project.
This article is from just over six years ago and the homes are still empty, which in a housing crisis is not a good look.
