There’s a fatuous expression that the good folk pull in church sometimes, when there’s a Communion wafer melting gently in their mouth and they are taking a humble path back from altar to kneeling pad. It used to make me giggle – when I used to go to church – because it was impossible to believe, amid all that Sunday-morning coffee breath, that they were honestly experiencing the spiritual ecstasy their faces seemed to convey.

It’s similar to the expression, full of righteousness and emotion, politicians put on when they talk about things like “banishing child poverty”. It is also the face that everybody pulls, between winter-sun breaks, when they talk about the bloody environment. I sometimes think I’d prefer the entire world to be drowned by melting icecaps than to have to listen to another po-faced lecture about energy-efficient light bulbs.

So it was alarming to learn that anyone interested in viewing one of the surprisingly pleasant properties at Oxley Woods, an eco-development just outside Milton Keynes, must first visit the on-site “Education Centre”.

It’s a bit like being on a school field trip: you have to stand politely, for ages, while someone tells you plenty of stuff, only a minute fraction of which is likely to be interesting. And the walls are covered with simple yet informative posters. “DID YOU KNOW?” says one, with an amazingly helpful picture of a pair of earphones on it, “OUR HOUSES ARE WELL SOUND INSULATED.”

In any case, to recap – and I suppose I must – I learnt various things on my field trip. That the houses on the development arrive on site in panels and can be slotted together with a minimal use of icecap-melting heavy machinery. That their external walls are made of resin-bonded recycled wood and paper fibre, and the roof tiles are formed from rubber to avoid using a kiln. That large windows maximise natural light and “passive” heat. That each property is fitted with an “ecohat”, similar to a solar panel, which circulates warm air inside the house and can provide supplementary hot water. And that the recycling bin in the kitchen comes “as standard”.

Oxley Woods’s environmental credentials have won no end of plaudits within the industry, but they haven’t, apparently, proved to be an overriding consideration for buyers. “It’s quite popular and trendy these days for people to care,” explains Jason Colmer, the unsentimental marketing man who is responsible for my education. “So the eco factor is a bonus. But the real attraction of Oxley Woods is the design – that’s what tends to give people the buzz.”

It is is certainly extraordinary. The development is still a partial building site, with 59 of the projected 143 houses yet to be built, but what has been completed so far looks like something out of a Dr Seuss book: a sea of sharp angles, shiny surfaces, bright colours and peculiarly shaped off-centre roofs.

I have to say that, in its own mad way, it looks wonderful.

“Honestly, when I first saw it, I thought, ‘Christ, have I got to sell this?’ ” Colmer says. “People selling properties on neighbouring developments don’t see Oxley Woods as competition. They see it as a blot on the landscape. The way I see it, though, it’s all about offering the consumer choice.” The choice to live a morally superior life, inside the pages of a children’s story book? Well, put like that, why not? Plot 75, which is being slotted together as I write, is a three-bedroom, two-storey house with a small garden, on the market for £210,000. At 827 sq ft, it is the same size as, and has a similar room layout to, the show home, which, posteducation, I was finally invited to look around.

What can I say? I don’t want to live on a new housing estate outside Milton Keynes, but if, for some peculiar reason, I simply had to – for example, if my children would be executed were I to refuse – then Plot 75, Oxley Woods, might well be the spot to head for.

Apart from a small utility/cloakroom, the ground floor is an open space, with the kitchen at one end and doors that open out onto the garden at the other. The windows on both sides are enormous; Colmer kept switching the lights on and off to illustrate the point that, during the day, there was no real need for them. There wasn’t. The room is flooded with natural light.

More light “cascades” (as Colmer puts it) down the broad, curving staircase, and upstairs, although the house is small, there is a surprising sense of space – partly because, thanks to the aforementioned “ecohat”, there is no need for an attic, which means the ceilings are unusually high.

The houses have been built without front gardens, but there is a small green space, with a bench, in the middle of each close. “The great thing about this development is, it attracts like-minded people,” Colmer says.

I’m not one of them – but any wafer-chewers out there who don’t suffer from an innate aversion to Milton Keynes, and have a taste for Dr Seuss, should make for Oxley Woods. Plot 75 may have its foundations planted in a concrete bed of eco-righteousness, but otherwise it’s quite nice.

Plot 75, Oxley Woods, MiltonKeynes, £210,000

What is it?A three-bed house Where is it?On a new 145-home development near Milton Keynes Who is selling it?George Wimpey; 01908 866938, www.georgewimpey.co.uk Not tempted? Here’s what £210,000 buys elsewhere

Cumbria - Ruby House is a four-bedroom, three-bathroom semi, arranged as three flats. It is in Kendal, between the Lake District and the Yorkshire Dales. Michael CL Hodgson; 01539 721375, www.michael-cl-hodgson.co.uk

Kent - Set inside a Grade II-listed country house in Mystole, four miles from Canterbury, this two-storey maisonette has two bedrooms, two reception rooms and one bathroom. Coutts Byers; 01227 456645, www.couttsbyers.com

Herefordshire - This three-bedroom cottage in Lyonshall, a village 12 miles from Hereford, has a large lounge, a conservatory, a dining room and a garden with driveway parking. Russell Baldwin & Bright; 01544 230387, www.rbbproperty.co.uk

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