Police descend on eco-haven after acid attack

When the off-grid community of Tipi Valley was established in the mid-1970s, they got used to police turning up to “disturb the hippies” and their cannabis crops in the Welsh countryside.
Over the past two decades, however, as the isolated and steep-sided valley was transformed from bare sheep fields into a rewilded landscape of woodland pastures stretching for 200 acres, the hundred or so inhabitants barely saw a police officer.
That all changed last week when a well-loved member of the community became the victim of an acid attack.
“He is still in hospital and his eyesight is not guaranteed,” a friend of the victim told The Times. “It’s too early to say how he will be. It has shocked the community. Nothing like this has happened before and it’s tragic.”
Police cars and fire and rescue teams had to drive up miles of rutted and narrow lanes on August 14 to reach the eco enclave, which has embedded itself into a lush hillside on the southern edge of the Cambrian mountains, near Llandeilo in Carmarthenshire.
A forensics team was set up near farm buildings at the gates of the community and within 48 hours a suspect was arrested. Jivan Dean, 23, of no fixed abode, appeared in Llanelli magistrates’ court on Monday charged with grievous bodily harm and throwing a corrosive substance over a person. He did not enter a plea and was remanded in custody to appear at Swansea crown court in September.
Community members said that Dean had been “living on and off here” recently, while the victim was a well-known member of the community who came and went regularly.
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“I know someone who witnessed it,” one resident said of the attack. “It’s been quite shocking. It’s tragic. Everyone is affected by it and we all have to process it. Our openness to visitors is part of who we are because we all got in through that openness. I don’t think that will change.”
Daniel Hooper, who became a household name in the late 1990s as the eco-warrior Swampy, is one of those who has built his home in the valley.
He arrived after a brief taste of fame and for the past 20 years has lived in the valley with his partner, Clare, and their three children. There have been more than 130 home births in the tipis, yurts and roundhouses dotted among the thick scrubland and lush pastures.
When police officers entered the valley, they encountered a landscape reminiscent of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. A community living close to nature in small, turf-roofed homes practically dug into the hillside, with many residents smoking their own home-grown leaf, in scenes as close to JRR Tolkien’s pastoral idyll of hobbits as it’s possible to create in 21st-century Britain.
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Cars can’t get beyond the farm buildings at the end of the potholed track and, once you pass through a metal gate, there are only footpaths leading into thick, hedge-lined fields and woodland clearings.
“It’s a wheelbarrow lifestyle,” one resident said, after inviting The Times into his wooden roundhouse for a cup of tea. “It’s almost an extension of my body and that is kind of the beauty of it really. We leave all the noise behind, with the cars by the road. That is why it’s peaceful, most of the time.
“It’s very much like a village. People look after their own economy and do their own thing. We don’t have communal work and there are no stipulations. We just like living an off-grid lifestyle, a bit more connected to nature.”
As you walk the overgrown paths, it is often only possible to spot a turf-roofed house through the dense vegetation by a metal chimney popping out of the grass. Some of the wattle and daub homes, with their recycled glass windows and wooden doors, have well-kept gardens bursting with produce, while others have less tidy inhabitants. Many have running water provided by hosepipes fed by local streams. Some keep chickens, goats and cows. A few of the garden polytunnels had well-tended cannabis crops inside.
A former dairy farmer, who has lived in the community for more than 40 years, said his home cost £1,000 to build. “If everyone lived like this, there would be no climate crisis,” he said, “but I don’t think most people will, so we are probably doomed … it’s the modern world that is the aberration.”
The community’s land is held in a trust and people wanting to join often begin as visitors who are welcome to stay in the Big Lodge, a large tipi at the top of the hill.
“It’s an open community,” one resident said. “We welcome people if they feel they need to live here or are inspired by that. Generally, winter in Wales will sort the wheat from the chaff. Everything is bliss in the summer but winters are long and wet. It’s not easy. It’s got its challenges but you are living in a beautiful place.”
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Living in any community comes with its frictions and sometimes people are asked to leave Tipi Valley. “People who have lived here longer can suss out if people aren’t right for the area,” one roundhouse dweller said.
“There is a bit of freedom with this lifestyle and not everyone can handle it. If it doesn’t gel and there is abusive behaviour as a new person comes into the scene, sometimes you have to make the decision that someone has to go.
“Generally things sort themselves out but sometimes you have to intervene. What happened here is really unfortunate.”