While most of us are reaching for the thermostat to block out February’s biting chill, a small group of protesters are sitting in a makeshift wooden cabin in Titnore Woods, finding a touch of warmth around a cobbled-together wood-burning stove.

Camp Titnore will be 1,000 days old this month, with March 23 marking three years since activists occupied the ancient woodlands in West Durrington in the Borough of Worthing. They are protesting against a vast development.

A giant Tesco supermarket is already under construction, and plans will see the concreting over of some 120 acres of wood and pasture land, replacing it with 1,200 homes, a road infrastructure and a community centre.

The camp is in a finger of muddy ancient woodland off the A2700, flanked on either side by broad green fields. My guide, Daniel*, asks me not to identify anyone at the camp, since their efforts to preserve the land have led to High Court injunctions against all of them.

He tells me the landscape has remained largely unchanged since the Ice Age and a lake off to the east is a product of glacial retreat. Despite the busy road just a few hundred metres away, the woods and fields are quiet and harbour a quintessentially English mood, as though you could find yourself here and immediately know it is the South East of England. It’s easy to see why they don’t want it lost.

The issue is complex. The South East Plan demands 32,700 new houses a year.

In Worthing, the council has to add 4,000 dwellings by 2026, but they have run out of brownfield sites to develop and so have to move on to greenfield land.

Daniel says there are as many as 1,000 empty homes in Worthing that should be used before building more.

James Appleton, executive head of planning, regeneration and wellbeing at Worthing Borough Council, says bringing empty houses back into use “does not overcome the need to provide additional housing”.

Campaigners complain a 5,000-strong petition has been ignored because the value of so many four-bedroom three-car-garage homes is too strong to resist. They have no doubt the scheme will get the go-ahead. James says the issue will be decided through proper channels at the planning meeting on March 15, and insists that objections will be taken into due consideration.

Although rough-and-ready, the camp has a Hobbit-like romance to it. A communal cabin made from materials rescued from skips marks the entrance, with a rickety set of shelves filled with vegetables, frozen in the cold air.

Inside, the wood burner marks the difference between outside and in, but we can still see our breath fogging in the air. What’s it like living here? “It’s fine,” says David, a stalwart of the Newbury bypass protests. “There’s not many people here at the moment.

But when they come back it’s lovely, a proper community.” What about the cold? “You get used to it.” And the logistics? “We rescue materials people chuck away. We’ve got a composting toilet. People bring us food. We’ve had so much support from the local town. No one wants this development.”

*not his real name