THE owner of a Northumbrian castle is planning to build a £2.5m treetop village in its grounds.

The Duchess of Northumberland, married to the 12th Duke, one of Britain's richest men, plans to open Tree Topia as a visitor attraction at Alnwick Castle.

She has already received Royal approval for the £15m 12-acre Alnwick Garden,which she has created over the past six years.

Prince Charles became patron of the scheme at its inception and opened the attraction earlier this week.

The plans for Tree Topia are being submitted to local planners and the Duchess is reported to be "incredibly excited" by the scheme.

But in Alnwick, the response was more muted. One resident said: "It looks like the Ewok village from Return of the Jedi."

Scale models, photo-montages, and computer graphics showing what the village will look like were released by Alnwick castle yesterday.

They show a series of multi- level walkways and rope bridges linking towers and lookout points on various trees, all surrounding a larger, turreted, castle-like tree house.

The project is expected to capture the imaginations of thousands of children and drastically increase visitor numbers.

The village would span more than 600 square feet of the grounds of Alnwick Castle.

The tree house complex has been designed with different purposes in mind, and will comprise an educational facility for parties of visiting school children, a playground, an adventure play park, function rooms, a restaurant and cafe and a large car park. The project is to be the subject of a site visit by Alnwick District Council's development control committee on September 11.