Arcadian idyll saved from the bulldozers

Villagers from a community once described as Arcadia, the legendary Greek idyll, yesterday won a last-ditch appeal to the House of Lords to save their homes.

The residents of Holt's Field near Swansea, west Wales, were last night celebrating their success in saving their unusual properties from the bulldozer.

The 14-acre site is one of the few surviving developments of wooden chalets from between the wars. The homes have been praised by Prince Charles's architectural magazine, Perspectives, for their eco-friendliness.

Six years ago a property company, Elitestone, bought the land and announced plans to re-possess a number of the properties, demolish them and build luxury flats instead.

The Law Lords ruled yesterday that the residents were entitled to the protection of the 1977 Rent Act, overturning a Court of Appeal decision that they were not protected tenants because the chalets rested on concrete pillars, making the properties more like mobile homes.